The auctioneer’s voice was already announcing the next article. This was an alluring thing in green tissue.
“Somebody’s heart and soul was in this,” Katherine read out impressively from its advertisement.
Florence Thomas bid it in for seven beans and opened it to find the sole of a worn out slipper and a heart-shaped candy box.
The pile steadily dwindled but Katherine did not pick up Mr. Huntington’s package until near the end. It certainly did not look inviting. Peggy’s heart gave a bound as it was lifted high in the air and the auctioneer began to praise it. She felt so sorry for Mr. Huntington that he did not know how to make his offering as attractive as theirs. She was sure nobody would bid their last few beans on that when there were still several delectable looking bundles on the table. And, to make it worse, the inscription that was supposed to extol its virtues merely said, “This isn’t worth as much as people think.” Why, mercy, no one in his right senses could think it worth anything done up so roughly as that! In a swift generous impulse Peggy bid “Ten beans!” in a loud voice, and with a glance of surprise and pity, Auctioneer Katherine handed her the prize in silence.
Peggy rather hesitated to open the poor little thing there before them all, but, glancing up, she saw Mr. Huntington’s eyes upon her with a curiously bright gaze. Something about the anticipation in his look reassured her and she tore off the wrapping hastily at last. There was a red cigarette box inside and she blushed furiously.
“I guess this was meant for the one man of our party,” Florence said, peering over her shoulder and tapping it humorously.
But Peggy was beginning to be certain that the box had only been used because it was the right size and that there was something—possibly even something interesting—inside. Gingerly she lifted the cover and drew out two slips of paper folded, then unwrinkling them on her knee she looked down and gasped, while a wave of brighter crimson swept over her face.
The first was a check for five thousand dollars! It was made out to Andrews, with a ticket attached saying, “For the new gymnasium.” The other was a check for one hundred dollars made out to bearer, with a note to explain, “for use in giving other people kind little parties as you all have to-day given me!”
What did it mean? Peggy stared across at her friend, and found him smiling delightedly that she had been the one to bid it in. Poor Mr. Huntington! Never again could they call him that—why, why—Mr. Huntington was rich, fabulously and wonderfully and generously rich, and they had never known. Through her mind flitted the memory of his remark about the recurring rumors that caused people to come to him in search of donations to various things. Again she thought of that odd phrase of his, “When one is piling up one’s fortune—”
“Oh,” she gasped, the deliciousness of their “charity” party sweeping over her. “Oh, how strange everything is all of a sudden! I think, perhaps, I’m asleep or something, this is just the crazy, impossible way things go in dreams. Florence, please pinch me.”