a dainty French trifle, and gazed, perhaps a bit wistfully, at Margaret
Elizabeth's endearing young charms. "I am delighted that you like
Augustus. He is a young man of sterling qualities. His mother and I were
warm friends; I take a deep interest in him. Of course he is not showy;
perhaps he might be called a little slow; but he is substantial, and
while I should be the last to place an undue emphasis upon wealth, one
need not overlook its advantages. Augustus has had unusual
opportunities."
"Is Mr. McAllister rich?" Margaret Elizabeth dropped her arms in a
surprise which in its turn stirred a like emotion in her aunt's breast,
for Miss Bentley put rather a peculiar emphasis, it would seem, upon the
word rich. "I should never have guessed it," she added.
If Mrs. Pennington had been perfectly honest with herself, she would
have perceived that her own surprise indicated a suspicion that minus
his wealth the aforesaid sterling qualities were something of a dead
weight, but not for worlds would she have owned this. It would be a
great thing for Margaret Elizabeth, if she liked him. If she could be
the means of establishing dear old Richard's child in a position such
as the future Mrs. Augustus would occupy, she would feel she had done
her full duty. Mrs. Pennington was strong in the matter of duty.
"I should never have guessed it," Margaret Elizabeth repeated, after a
minute spent in a quick review of that talk in the summer house.
"It is not always possible, surely, to gauge a person's bank account in
the course of one conversation," her aunt suggested.
"I don't mean that; but don't you think, Aunt Eleanor, you can usually
tell very rich people? They are apt to be limited, in a way. Not always,
of course, but often. I can't explain it exactly. Perhaps it is
over-refined."
"If to be refined is to be limited, I prefer to be limited," Mrs.
Pennington remarked.
It was plain that unless Margaret Elizabeth went to the length of
retailing the whole of that Sunday morning conversation, which was out
of the question, she could not hope to make her meaning clear.
"What surprises me," her aunt went on, "is that you should have met
Augustus in a public park. It is very unlike him. I wonder what he
thought of you?"
This brought out Miss Bentley's dimples, as she owned he had seemed not
displeased to meet her. "I explained that I was waiting for Dr. Prue,
who had gone in to see one of the superintendent's children." She
further assured her aunt that River Bend Park was a delightful place in
which to enjoy nature, on Sunday morning or any other time.
"I confess I do not choose a public park when I wish to enjoy
nature--except for driving, of course. Perhaps," added Mrs. Pennington,
"that is what you call over-refined."
Margaret Elizabeth considered this thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is," she
said. "Not being able to enjoy things that are free to everybody."
But Margaret Elizabeth in that frivolously-becoming cap was an antidote
to her own remarks. Mrs. Pennington smiled indulgently. Richard's
daughter came honestly by some eccentricities, not to mention those
Vandegrifts, whose influence she greatly deplored.
"You will outgrow these socialistic ideas, my dear," she said. "But
I am still puzzled, the more I think of it, at your meeting Augustus on
Sunday morning. Was it two weeks ago? I am under the impression he left
for New York that very day."
"He didn't mention it, but there are afternoon trains," answered
Margaret Elizabeth. "He merely said something about a sick boy he was
going to see at St. Mary's."
This again was very unlike Augustus, but Mrs. Pennington said no more.
Meanwhile the faintest shadow of a doubt was dawning in her niece's
mind; so shadowy she was scarcely aware of it, until, glowing from her
walk across the park, she entered the drawing-room that afternoon.
There is, by the way, a difference between walking in Sunset Park, the
abode of the elect, with a huge St. Bernard in leash, and taking the
same exercise at River Bend, unchaperoned save by a chance guard. Any
right-minded person must see this.
A young man, who sat talking to Mrs. Gerrard Pennington before the fire,
rose at her entrance.
"I am glad you have come, Margaret Elizabeth," her aunt exclaimed.
"I think you know Mr. McAllister? But we have rather a good joke on
you, for August says he was never in his life in River Bend Park."
"How do you do, Miss Bentley. Awfully glad to see you. That is, except
to motor through, don't you know, Mrs. Pennington."
Miss Bentley's brown eyes met Mr. McAllister's blue ones, and in the
period of one brief glance she experienced almost as many sensations,
and reviewed as much past history, as the proverbial drowning man.
The casual resemblance was striking. But the eyes--these were not the
friendly, merry eyes to which she had confided the fairy godmother
nonsense. Fancy so much as mentioning fairy godmothers in the presence
of these steely orbs.
Margaret Elizabeth was game, however.
"I was mistaken, of course," she owned lightly, as she shook hands.
"I have met so many people, and am stupid at connecting names and faces.
I recall Mr. McAllister perfectly." And straightway she plunged into
New York and what was going on there. Had he seen "Grumpy" and wasn't it
dear? And so on, and so on. Margaret Elizabeth could talk, and more than
this she could look bewitching, and did, when she slipped out of her
long coat, and with many graceful upward motions, removed her hat and
fluffed her hair.
She would make tea, she loved to, in fact she seemed bent upon luring
Augustus away from the fire and Mrs. Pennington. This young gentleman,
whose mental processes were not rapid, and who habitually overworked any
idea that found lodgment in his mind, was disposed to dwell upon River
Bend Park and Miss Bentley's strange mistake in thinking she had seen
him there, when actually, don't you know, he was on his way to New York.
It was just as well not to have the situation complicated by the
presence of her more alert relative, whose amused glances kept the glow
on Margaret Elizabeth's cheek at a most becoming pitch. Perhaps, too,
the subconscious thinking concerning that same queer mistake, which went
on while she chatted so gaily, so skilfully leading the way to safer
ground, had something to do with it.
Augustus, unaware that he was led, was as clay in her hands. He warmed
to her expressions of pleasure in the proposed dinner dance, which were
indeed entirely genuine. A dance was a dance, and Miss Bentley was
young. As she poured tea her curling lashes rested now on her cheek,
were now lifted in smiling glances at the complacent Augustus, much as
when on a certain Sunday morning, while softly laying bloom against
bloom, her eyes had now and again met the eyes of the Candy Man. There
were other callers, other tea drinkers, but to none did Mr. McAllister
surrender his place of vantage.
"If she keeps on like this, Augustus is hers--if she wants him,"
Mr. Gerrard Pennington remarked to his wife later in the evening.
"If I could have her all to myself," Mrs. Pennington sighed; "but any
impression I may make is neutralised by her association with those
Vandegrifts. It is an absurd arrangement, spending half her time down
there."
"I think you are rather in the lead, aren't you, my dear?"
Mrs. Pennington shrugged her shoulders, but there was some triumph in
her smile. "She is a dear child, in spite of some absurd notions, and
I long to see her well and safely settled. I don't quite know in what
her charm most lies, but she has it."
"Oh, it's her youth, and the conviction that it is all so jolly well
worth while. She is so keen about everything." There was an odd twinkle
in Mr. Pennington's eyes, usually so piercing beneath their bushy grey
brows. Margaret Elizabeth called him Uncle Gerry. It was amusing. He
liked it, and enjoyed playing the part of Uncle Gerry. "Of course she's
bound to get over that. Still, I shouldn't be in any haste to settle
her."
His wife thought of her brother, the Professor of Archæology, now in
the Far East. "It is queer, but Dick never has," she said, answering
the first part of his sentence. But when she spoke again, it was to
say energetically: "The Towers needs a mistress, and August is
irreproachable. Really, I am devoted to the boy."
Mr. Pennington found this amusing.
"If only it were a colonial house. It is handsome, but I prefer simpler
lines," Mrs. Pennington continued meditatively.
The Towers was a combination of feudal castle and Swiss châlet erected
thirty years before by the parents of Augustus, and occupying a
commanding position on Sunset Ridge. The irreverent sometimes referred
to it as the Salt Shakers.
Margaret Elizabeth meanwhile, in the solitude of her own room, was
asking herself questions, for which she found no answers.
"Who--oh, who was this person with the nice friendly eyes that led one
on to talk about fairy godmothers?"
She considered it in profound seriousness for a time, then suddenly
broke into unrestrained laughter.
CHAPTER SIX
_In which Margaret Elizabeth is discussed at the Breakfast Table; in
which also, later on, she and Virginia and Uncle Bob talk before the
fire, and in which finally Margaret Elizabeth seeks consolation by
relating to Uncle Bob her adventure in the park._
"No, she is not regularly beautiful," remarked Dr. Prue in her
diagnostician manner as she poured her father's second cup of coffee,
"but there is much that is captivating about her. Her hair grows
prettily on her forehead, the firmness of her chin, the line of her lips
in repose----"
"Mercy on us! You talk like a novel," interrupted Uncle Bob, who was
longing to get in an oar. "Now I like her best when she laughs."
"But I was speaking of her face in repose."
"And any way," persisted Uncle Bob, "if she isn't a beauty, I don't know
what you call it. She has the witchingest ways!"
"We were speaking of features, not ways. If you dissect her----"
"Good Heavens, Prue! Find another word."
"If you dissect her," the doctor repeated firmly, "you will find nothing
remarkable in her separate features."
"But I insist," Uncle Bob spoke in a loud tone, and brought his fist
down so emphatically his coffee spilled over into the saucer, "that
beauty is a complex thing consisting of ways as well as features."
The sentence was concluded in a milder tone, owing to the coffee.
"Nancy, give Mr. Vandegrift another saucer," said Dr. Prue.
"My dear, there is no need. I can pour this back," he protested. Then, a
fresh saucer having been substituted, he went on: "Take a landscape----"
"I haven't time for landscapes this morning, father. I am due at the
hospital at nine. You'll have to excuse me."
"Well, what I was going to say is, that it is the combination of all
her separate qualities and characteristics, manifested in ways and
otherwise, that is beautiful--that constitutes beauty. The something
that makes her Margaret Elizabeth, that subtle--" Uncle Bob was talking
against time.
"Now, father," Dr. Prue pushed back her chair and rose, "there is
nothing subtle about Margaret Elizabeth, and you know it. She is a
thoroughly nice, quite pretty girl, and that is all there is to it. If
those Penningtons don't spoil her." With this the doctor disappeared.
"Miss Prue and her pa do argufy to beat the band," Nancy remarked to
Jenny the cook as she waited for hot cakes.
"That's all, Nancy. I shan't want any more," her master told her when
she carried them into the dining-room. "You needn't wait." As the door
closed behind her he smiled to himself. He always enjoyed the leisurely
comfort of those last cakes.
The morning sun shone in brightly, emphasising the pleasant, substantial
appointments of the room and the breakfast table. Its glint in the old
silver coffee pot was a joy to him; the unopened paper at his elbow
spoke to him of the interests of a day, like it, not yet unfolded. Uncle
Bob after his own fashion savoured life....
[Illustration: DR. PRUE]
The sun had travelled around the house and was looking in at the west
window of the Little Red Chimney Room, when Virginia discovered her
ladyship sitting on a low stool by her hearthstone deep in meditation.
"I saw the smoke," she announced, "so I thought I'd come over."
"I am glad to see you," Margaret Elizabeth said, waking up. "But what
smoke do you mean?" And now it developed that although Miss Bentley was
of course aware of the Little Red Chimney, and indeed preferred it red,
she had not understood its significance.
In amused interest she listened while Virginia explained. "That dear,
ridiculous Uncle Bob!" she cried, hugging her knees. "And what fun,
Virginia!"
Virginia nodded. "Like a fairy-tale," she said.
"So it is," Miss Bentley agreed, and became again lost in thought.
From the other side of the hearth Virginia watched her. Her ladyship
to-day wore a grey-blue gown with a broad white collar, and she
contrasted harmoniously with the soft browns and greens of her
surroundings. Uncle Bob should have been there to enjoy the glint of
the sunshine in her hair.
It was an unobtrusive room, abounding in pleasant suggestions if you sat
still and let them sink in: books around the walls, a few water colours
and bits of porcelain, an open piano, a work table, a broad divan with
many cushions, ferns in the windows, and the fire.
Virginia, however, saw nothing of this; she was looking at Margaret
Elizabeth. "The Candy Man wanted to know where you stayed when you
weren't here," she remarked at length.
Miss Bentley came out of her brown study in great surprise. Who in the
world was the Candy Man?
"Why, you know the Candy Wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner! And don't you
remember how you fell in the mud, and the Candy Man helped you up, and
I gave you your bag, and the Miser was there too?" Virginia spoke in
patient toleration of Miss Bentley's strange lapse of memory.
"Naturally I was rather shaken and didn't notice. Was it a Candy Man who
picked me up? And a miser, you say?" Chin in hand Margaret Elizabeth
regarded her visitor. "It is all very interesting, but why should the
Candy Man wish to know about me?"
Virginia owned that she had mentioned the Little Red Chimney to him,
and that when the identity of her ladyship had come to light, he had
exclaimed, "I might have guessed!"
"Well, really," said Miss Bentley, sitting up very straight, "what
business is it of his to be guessing about me?"
"He isn't Irish like Tim," Virginia hastened to assure her. "He's very
nice. He's a friend of mine."
Margaret Elizabeth laughed. "That makes it all right, I suppose; and if
he picked me up--But who is the Miser?"
"He lives over there," Virginia pointed toward the front window, "in
that stone house with the vine on it. Aleck says he has rooms and rooms
full of money."
The house she indicated was almost black with time and soot, but its
fine proportions suggested spacious, high-ceiled rooms, and whatever its
present condition, a past of dignity and importance.
"How extremely interesting! What a remarkable neighbourhood this seems
to be!"
"Is it like a fairy-tale where you stay when you aren't here?" Virginia
asked.
Sudden illumination came to Margaret Elizabeth. "That is just what it
isn't," she cried. "It's splendid and beautiful, and all sorts of
things, except a fairy-tale. I wonder why? I love fairy-tales and Little
Red Chimneys."
"So does the Candy Man," exclaimed Virginia, charmed at the coincidence.
"It must be fun to be a Candy Man," she continued. "It isn't much like
a fairy-tale where I live. I should like to live in a sure-enough house
with stairs."
"You talk like a squirrel who lives in a tree. And speaking of squirrels,
you and I must buy some nuts for our bunny sometime, from this Candy
Man. If he picked me up I suppose I ought to patronise him. All the
same, Virginia," and now Miss Bentley spoke with great seriousness,
"I wish you not to say anything about me to him. It is rather silly,
you know."
Virginia did not know, but she longed to do in every particular what
Miss Bentley desired, so she promised.
The opal lights in the western sky were the only reminders left of the
sunny day, when Uncle Bob, seated comfortably in the big armchair,
listened to Margaret Elizabeth's confession, the flames dancing and
curling around a fresh log meanwhile. In size it was but a modest log,
for the fireplace was neither wide nor deep like those at Pennington
Park, but the Little Red Chimney did its part so merrily and well that
upon no other hearth could the flames dance and curl so gaily. At least
so it had seemed to Margaret Elizabeth, sitting there chin in hand,
after Virginia's departure.
"And you are certain you never met him before?" Uncle Bob ran his
fingers through his hair and frowned thoughtfully.
"Perfectly certain. You see the resemblance was remarkable, all but
the eyes, and I thought Mr. McAllister had simply waked up. People
are sometimes stiff when you first meet them. He knew who I was, for
he called me Miss Bentley. Naturally I thought it was some one I had
met--particularly when he mentioned the accident. You see, in getting
out of the machine at the Country Club a day or two before I caught
my skirt in the door and fell, striking my elbow. It didn't amount to
anything, though it hurt for a minute, but Aunt Eleanor made a great
fuss. He may have been somewhere about at the time, but I didn't meet
him. And it makes me furious," Margaret Elizabeth continued, "when
I think of his not telling me."
"Telling you that you didn't know him?" asked Uncle Bob.
"Certainly, he should have said at the very beginning, 'Miss Bentley,
you are mistaken in thinking you know me.'"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Uncle Bob.
"Now what are you laughing at?" his niece demanded. "Honestly, don't you
think he should have?" But she laughed herself.
"Well, perhaps," he owned, reflecting, however, that if Margaret
Elizabeth looked half so alluring that morning as she did now in her
grey-blue frock, with her bright hair a bit tumbled, it was asking a
good deal of human nature.
"Now, of course, Uncle Bob, this is strictly confidential. I wouldn't
have Dr. Prue know for the world. It is bad enough to have Aunt Eleanor
smiling sarcastically, though she doesn't know half. I think I have at
length quieted her, and the great Augustus is entirely mollified." She
paused to laugh again, then continued tragically, "Sympathy is what I
need now. To begin with, it was the most perfect day--the sort to make
you forget tiresome conventions."
Uncle Bob nodded. "Perhaps he forgot, too," he suggested.
Margaret Elizabeth bit her lip. "That's true. I must try to be fair.
He had nice eyes, Uncle Bob--with a twinkle in them." A smile played
over her lips, her dimple came and went. She gazed absently at the
curling flame. Suddenly she rose from her ottoman, and seated herself
bolt upright on the sofa with one of the plumpest cushions behind her.
"All the same it was inexcusable in me," she declared sternly.
"What was?" asked her uncle.
"The nonsense I talked. About a Fairy Godmother Society! No doubt he was
laughing in his sleeve all the time."
"Oh, I guess not. It sounds quite original and interesting. Have you
copyrighted the idea?"
"Uncle Bob, you are a dear. Some time I'll tell you all about it--when
I get over feeling so terribly, if I ever do."
"Now, really," insisted Uncle Bob, "I don't see why you should worry.
You are almost certain to meet him again, and----"
"I shall die if I do," Margaret Elizabeth declared; but somehow the
assertion failed to ring true.
"From what you have said he is plainly a gentleman, and altogether
matters might be worse," Uncle Bob concluded.
Miss Bentley shook her head. "I don't see how they could be," she
insisted.
CHAPTER SEVEN
_Shows how the Candy Wagon is visited in behalf of the Squirrel, and
how pride suffers a fall; how Miss Bentley turns to Vedantic Philosophy
to drown her annoyance, and discovers how hard it is to forget when you
wish to._
"When I reflect upon the small weight attaching to true worth
unsupported by personal charm, I am tempted to turn cynic."
Dr. Prue closed her bag with a snap and lifted her arms to adjust a
hatpin.
"Youth and beauty take the trick, that's a fact." Uncle Bob laughed as
if he found it a delicious comedy.
They stood before the office window. At the gate the Apartment Pigeons
were fluttering around Margaret Elizabeth, while her ladyship gravely
admonished them for some piece of mischief.
"I believe she is taming the terrors," remarked the doctor.
"She had them all in the other afternoon," said Uncle Bob, "sitting
cross-legged on the floor like little Orientals, while she told them
stories. Margaret Elizabeth can manage them!" His tone thrilled with
pride.
"Yes, and Miss Kitty Molloy will drop anything she has on hand to work
for Miss Bentley; the market-man picks out his choicest fruit for her;
and so it goes, if you call it managing. Well, I must be off. Good-by."
As Dr. Prue went out, Margaret Elizabeth, having dismissed the pigeons
for the time being, came in, and sat down at her desk to finish a
letter.
She wrote: "Yes, Uncle Bob and Cousin Prue argue as much as ever, and
I suspect that more often than not I am the subject upon which they
disagree. I am in a state of disagreement about myself, father dear.
Society is absorbing beyond anything I dreamed of, and if I had not
promised you to stop and think for at least ten minutes out of the
fourteen hundred and forty, I fear I should have already become a real
Society Person."
At this point Uncle Bob looked in. "Well, how many parties on hand now?"
he asked.
Margaret Elizabeth laid down her pen and counted them off on her
fingers, beginning with a tea at five, theatre and supper afterward, and
so on, till the supply of fingers threatened to become exhausted.
"Go on, I'll lend you mine," said Uncle Bob. "Prue says," he added,
"that it is enough to kill you, but you look pretty strong."
"She wouldn't mind if I worked my fingers to the bone for her hospital
or the Suffrage Association, but I want a little fun first, Uncle Bob."
Margaret Elizabeth supported an adorable chin in a pink palm and
regarded her relative appealingly.
"That's what I tell Prue. It is natural you should like best to stay at
Pennington Park, and go about in a splendid machine. I don't blame you
in the least, and I don't wish you to feel bound to come down here when
you don't really care to. Much as I love to have you, I shall not be
hurt." Uncle Bob nodded at Margaret Elizabeth with a reassuring smile
that in spite of intentions was a bit wistful too.
"I don't believe you understand, and for that matter, neither do I. I
love you best, and the Little Red Chimney, and this darling room. There
aren't any fairies at Pennington Park, but--I do like the whirl, the
fun, the pretty things, and----"
"The admiration, Margaret Elizabeth; out with it. You'll feel better,"
said Uncle Bob.
"Well, yes, people _do_ like me, and oh, I must show you
something!" She sprang up, and from a box lying on the sofa she took a
filmy, rose-coloured fabric. "What do you think of this?" she demanded,
shaking out the shimmering folds before his surprised eyes.
He rose nobly to the occasion. "Why, it looks like a sunset cloud. Is it
to wear?"
"Certainly. It is a pattern robe. Miss Kitty across the street is going
to put it together for me. She is a genius. Sunset cloud is very poetic.
Thank you, Uncle Bob. And now I must finish my letter before I go over
to Miss Kitty's, and then I promised the children I'd go with them to
buy some nuts for the squirrel. A bunny who has the courage to live so
far downtown should be rewarded. I wish you had been here, Uncle Bob, to
join our society." Margaret Elizabeth sat down with the rosy cloud all
about her, and laughed at the recollection. "Never again will they throw
a stone at his bunnyship. We laid our hands together so, and swore by
the paw of the cinnamon bear and the ear of the tailless cat, to take
the part of our brother beasts and birds. It was all on the spur of the
moment, or I might have done better, but they were impressed."
[Illustration: UNCLE BOB]
"I should think so, indeed," remarked her uncle. "You are a sort of
philanthropist after all."
"Yes, I have a very marked bump. That reminds me, if I don't see Dr.
Prue, you tell her, please, that I am going to take Augustus McAllister
to the Suffrage meeting."
Having returned her robe to its box, Miss Bentley sat down at her desk
and wrote furiously for five minutes, then folded her letter, put it
in the envelope, and addressed, stamped, and sealed it, concluding the
business with a resolute fist. Shortly after, in the familiar grey suit,
with the little grey hat jammed down anyhow on her bright hair, she went
forth, the box containing the sunset cloud under her arm.