“Peggy,” warned Katherine.
“I mean after yesterday, you goosey,” she frowned at her room-mate, and then in a very audible aside, “did you think I would give it all away like that?” She turned to their guest. “You see I was nearly lost in the snow yesterday, and from thinking I’d never see any of my friends again to—to seeing them, you know, is a very pleasant jump.”
“Well, I heard about it from one of the girls who was passing my house and stopped in to tell me about your adventure and I hurried over to see if you’re surely feeling all right and how you’d like a little dinner party at the Holland Hotel in celebration of your escape?—you and seven or eight classmates?”
“Oh, wouldn’t we?” cried Peggy. “I was wondering how I was going to stand dinner in this place to-night. You know they wouldn’t let me have any last night and if your gr—I mean if the young man that rescued me hadn’t given me some soup before that I’d have starved.”
Katherine’s foot reached for Peggy’s to administer rebuke for what she had so nearly said. “It will be lovely for us to have the dinner party, Mr. Huntington,” she put in hastily to cover the mistake her room-mate had made. “Sometimes, just eating here, we do get awfully hungry.”
“I never saw you girls when you weren’t hungry,” laughed their friend. “It was your continually thinking about something to eat that first led to our acquaintance, wasn’t it?”
The dinner party that evening was a great success. The girls loved nothing better than to dress up in state and go in a crowd to the hotel for dinner, but it was an event that came seldom in their lives. They talked so much about the wonderful lobster and the crisp French fried potatoes and all the bewildering array of little extras that the great subject in the minds of the two principal guests was forgotten for the time, and whether H. stood for Holt or Hamilton became a matter of no great moment.
When, however, the card of Mr. James H. Smith was brought to the girls the following afternoon interest quickly revived and they went downstairs with their best detective manners.
“This is the man whose dog I saved in the storm and who, to show his appreciation, saved me,” laughed Peggy by way of introduction. “And this,”—presenting her room-mate, “is the nicest girl in the world—whom I chance to room with.”
“My only claim to distinction is rooming with Peggy,” smiled Katherine, offering her hand. “We’re glad to see you over here, Mr. Smith—and are you going to show me the withered rose, too? Because the rose-tree was mine as much as Peggy’s—”