“If the girls of the school simply want a place to give a party—is that it?—somewhere away from the school itself, where they can be more free,—I should be distinctly terrified at the presence of so many young ladies after so long a time of solitude, but still I think I might go through with it—why not let me give them a party, if they will be so kind as to cook the things I furnish?”
Peggy’s round eyes studied Mr. Huntington’s face thoughtfully. How people hated to admit they were poor! Here he was offering to buy enough food for a dozen hungry girls when he himself had barely enough to eke out a scanty meal from one week’s end to another, according to the girls’ stories.
“Oh,—please,” she hastened to put in. “That’s part of our course, knowing what to buy and all that, and we do so want to have a few real chances to use all the knowledge that is being pounded into us. If I can go back and tell those girls—” her breath caught in her throat for an instant at the prospect of such a triumphant moment, “if I can go back and tell those girls,” she repeated, “that we can give a party in Gloo—I mean here, why that will be the best time I’ve had this term!”
The old man was looking at her quizzically.
“For some reason you apparently want to very much,” he mused. “Well, you are the first person who has come to me in a number of years with the idea of giving something rather than taking. If only for that reason I should encourage you to have your way. For the last twenty years people have been coming to me now and then—whenever a certain rumor starts up afresh—wanting this, that and the other: subscriptions to charities, money to put their children through school: capital to start them in business. But I always tell them,” he chuckled softly, “I always let them know that I am very poor.”
Oh, then, he didn’t mind having folks know, after all. Peggy winced at the open way he spoke of it now, after all her efforts to conceal the fact that she knew his poverty.
“Oh,” she said uncomfortably, “you’re not very poor. I’m poor, too. My aunt sends me to school, but when I am graduated I’m going to earn my own living!” She shot it out at him, all breathless to see the effect of so astounding a piece of news. Something at once so tragic and so thrilling.
“You are?” queried the old man absently. “Well, I sometimes think those are the happiest days of a person’s life—the days of piling up their fortune—”
“Of—of—my goodness!” gasped Peggy. “I’m not dreaming of piling up a fortune. What could I do that would be worth very much? I’m going to—I’m going—to—”
“Yes?” asked the old man.