“Peggy,” he began again, “asked me to let her go through with this experiment in order that some day I might conscientiously recommend her for a cook. And I want to say—” he raised his voice, “that after the spread I’ve had to-day I’m willing and anxious to recommend any one of you sixty girls, domestic science class or otherwise, to anything in the United States that you may want.”
The girls interrupted with joyous laughter.
“And if there is anything any of you can think of now that she’d especially like to have, I’ll do my best to get it for her,” he continued.
The girls, of course, took it all as merely a polite speech and liked it very much, but Mrs. Forest felt that here was an Opportunity, spelled with a capital. She carefully brushed the crumbs from her lap and rose, while to their horror the girls heard her say, “If your kind offer includes all of us, Mr. Huntington, there is one thing we all want very much and perhaps you would be willing to help us a little toward—”
Peggy coughed at this minute so violently that she completely distracted the attention of everyone from Mrs. Forest, and it was some three minutes before the spasm was entirely over and other sounds could be heard again. Peggy was exhausted from the wracking efforts of that cough and she sat limply back hoping for the best. But Mrs. Forest was suavely beginning again.
“To go back to what I started to ask, Mr. Huntington, there is one thing that Andrews has wanted for a long time and a little contribution—”
Here, oddly enough, Katherine was seized with a fit of coughing that rivaled Peggy’s in violence and duration.
“Somebody else will have to think up something better next time,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth a few minutes later as her gaspings ceased. “It isn’t natural to have any more of us affected that way.”
“Poor girls,” murmured Mrs. Forest, “they must have gotten overheated getting the dinner and this room is cooler. Well, as I was about to say—”
At this point Florence Thomas quietly fainted dead away and toppled into a little chiffon heap on the hearth rug.