Sixty separate groups of dear home people were being vividly pictured in that one great room, sixty different houses were suddenly mentally erected within that house. Ever and ever so many beloved voices were imagined right in among the murmuring real voices of the friends about them.
And, contradictory as it may seem, keeping pace with their happy contentment in the moment went a big, aching, sweeping longing in each girl’s mind for just one minute in mother’s arms, one instant of her dear, real, understanding presence. And from under sixty pairs of lashes bright tear drops were fought back, while each girl, wrapped up in her own heart-ache, believed that she alone was experiencing anything like this and that the others were all as free from such homeward thoughts as they had been when screaming with laughter a few hours ago over the grinds in the dining-room.
Thus all our experiences we go through much more in common with the rest of mankind than we suppose. But this is especially so in school and college, where a great number of young people of the same age and of more or less the same station in life are placed in exactly similar environment. The same tears, the same laughter, the same desires and the same satisfactions all girls who have gone away to school have felt in varying degree. And now here sat this roomful of girls, each suffering in the same new and unexpected way at the same time and each believing her mental situation to be strangely different from anything ever experienced in the world before.
The spell had even affected Mrs. Forest, too, for when she rose to gather up her flock she gave a great sigh and spoke with a curious gentleness that the girls had never associated with her pompous tones.
“I think, young ladies, it is time we went back to our school, now. And I’m sure we’ll join in thanking Mr. Huntington for the best time we have had this season. And we are very grateful for his most kind gift to Andrews. If he would care to come to our school musicales and entertainments nobody would be a more welcome guest than he. Get your wraps, young ladies, and we will take our departure.”
The girls scrambled up from the floor and went reluctantly to the hall, where they slipped into great fur coats, and fastened rubbers on their daintily shod feet.
“Good-by, good-by,” they called from the door, and troops and troops of them went down the whitened walk, laughing back expressions of appreciation.
Peggy had whispered in Mrs. Forest’s ear just as she was about to leave, and Mrs. Forest had nodded her head graciously. So Peggy went to Katherine and drew her back from the crowds of those preparing to go home, and when the rest had gone the two girls went back to the fire and sat down in great arm-chairs on either side of it, while Mr. Huntington mused into the blue flames and began to see there a picture of something that had happened long ago.
“So you want to hear why I have to be alone on Thanksgiving day unless outsiders take pity on me, do you?” he asked, for Peggy had begged him at the door to tell her about his daughter and the grandson that would be older than she. It was daring, but she felt very strongly that someway Mr. Huntington wanted to talk, wanted to tell someone, and she believed she and Katherine and he were good enough friends now to make it possible for him to tell his story to them.
“Well,” hesitated the old man— The girls settled themselves more comfortably in the great chairs and leaned forward, their chins in their hands, while the whimsical light of the fire played over them now in rose-colored flickers of light, now in lavender brilliance.