But when Florence did, she yelled “Ouch” in a voice that was wide awake enough, so she knew those uncanny checks in her hands were real.
“The gymnasium is to be named Parson’s Hall,” smiled Mr. Huntington, “that’s the condition, and it’s really to be Peggy’s gift to the school. The school would never have had it—that is from me—on any other score. The small check is Peggy’s own—and I waited until I saw your eyes watching me, child, before I laid the package on the table, for I hoped you’d be the one to bid for it out of the kindness of your heart.”
Mrs. Forest had turned pale at the mention “gymnasium” and now she jumped from her chair and made her way to Peggy’s side with an almost youthful alacrity.
“How—wonderful, how delightful, how kind, how thoughtful, how perfectly splendid,” she cried, reading the check with dazzled eyes. “Mr. Huntington, I thank—”
“Thank Peggy,” he said, somewhat shortly and walked over to the fireplace.
Peggy’s heart was full of happiness. To be able to give something to Andrews that would last always and would bear her name!
How beautiful that was! This school that had already meant so much to her in friendships and worth while knowledge not all out of books,—how very glad she would be to come back to it some day and see the neat little gymnasium, with her name on the building, full of romping girls that loved each other as she and Katherine did, and had the same glorious, care-free outlook on life that she had now!
“I wish I could say—half of what I’m thinking,” she murmured, looking gratefully up at Mr. Huntington with moist eyes.
He merely smiled. “Or I wish that I myself could, after a day like to-day,” he answered after a time.
A kind of quiet settled down on the girls and they talked in low pitched voices, laughing only in a comfortable undertone while the sense of homelikeness and good feeling grew and grew and struck deeply into each heart, bringing those inner visions that belong to Thanksgiving day, but need just the right atmosphere to make them perfect.