“Good-bye, from your much excited Next-Year’s Room-mate,
“Gloria Hazeltine.”
Peggy dropped the letter back on the desk and sat down on her couch, her hands clasped over her knees disconsolately, and her eyes unhappily looking into the future. Finally she rose with a mighty sigh and, turning her back on her room-mate, she began to dress for the afternoon with infinite care.
“Where are you going, Peggy?” Katherine asked, “and may I come along?”
“You could,” said Peggy after a reluctant pause, “if you wanted to and if I didn’t have a date all arranged with somebody who told me to come just by myself.”
She realized that her reply sounded ungracious, but the letter from Katherine’s next year’s room-mate was vivid in her mind, and she felt that after all she wasn’t going to be missed. It meant so much to her not to go to college and yet nothing to anyone else. It is human nature to want to be missed, and Peggy couldn’t help her twinge of disappointment in the fact that her absence was going to mean so little.
Mr. Huntington had asked her to spend the afternoon in a walk with him, as he had said he wanted to get her opinion on something he was planning, and as he often did nice things for the townspeople now, Peggy felt sure this was another such venture and that he merely wanted the shining-eyed approval she was always certain to give.
He had said, “Nobody but you, this time, Peggy,” and yet, when she went down to the gate to meet him, there stood his grandson also, smiling as broadly as the old man, and both of them seemed to be in some delightful secret that she didn’t know about at all. Mr. Huntington directed their walk toward a new part of town that was just being built up.
“It’s not generally known that I own all this,” he told Peggy, “but I do, and it’s I who am building it up. Now look down this tiny street—look hard and tell me what you think of it!”
“Oh!” cried Peggy, staring down the dear little new street with great interest,—great enough to make her forget the thing she couldn’t have, for the moment—for there was a double row of adorable little bungalows, just newly painted, as neat and trim and attractive as any houses ever were in the world, and the street itself seemed to be just a miniature affair, with only six houses on each side and then ending in a vine covered wall. “Oh, it’s darling!” cried the irrepressible Peggy, “I just love it! Who could have imagined any such dear, doll-like little street, with twelve such lovely bungalows on it! This street ought to have a wonderful name, Mr. Huntington—don’t you think so, Jim? Please, please, Mr. Huntington, if it’s not already named, let Jim and me pick out what to call it. I just know that we could find a name that would satisfy everybody who ever took one of those cute houses to live in as long as they stand.”