Just think," she turned to Peggy, "in twenty years he's never had any hot coffee-or more than enough to keep a bird alive."

Peggy sat down on a stone and poised an olive half-way to her mouth.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"He's very poor, you know," said Florence.

"Too poor to buy coffee?-I should think somebody in the town-"

"Oh, my dear," interrupted one of the other girls, "scared to death!

n.o.body'd think of offering to do anything for him. He's the proudest man in the world. He used to own most of this town, but everything has drifted away from him. He never goes anywhere-n.o.body ever sees him. He wouldn't want to see anyone. He telephones to the grocery for just a few things once in a while, and that's how he gets along. Why, Peggy, you look so funny."

"While we're sitting here, having a party, do you mean to tell me the man that lives in Gloomy House is starving?" asked Peggy in a hushed voice.

"Well, sort of hungry, but don't you worry about it, we can't do anything about it, Peggy." Florence handed Peggy a fresh roll with a crisp slice of bacon temptingly projecting from the ends. "He couldn't have been starving for twenty years, you know-but it would be nearer that than I'd like to experience for myself."

Peggy's head drooped thoughtfully. The sunlight, glinting down here and there through the dense green of the trees, shone in a little patch of light on her brown-gold hair. She was a vivid little person, with laughing black eyes and cheeks that flared red through their tan. Her brown arms were clasped over her knees now, as she studied the moist, pebbly sand at her feet.

"_I'd_ have made him some coffee," she said at last, her crooked dimple flickering into view for just an instant.

"No, you wouldn't," denied Florence Thomas, "n.o.body has been in that house to do anything as daring as that for years. There's a mystery about it, I tell you-and, in spite of story books, n.o.body likes to probe too deeply into mysteries. Some people even say that a relative of Mr.

Huntington's stole all his money from him and that's why he has to live so poorly. Yes, there are lots of stories-"

Peggy brushed the crumbs out of her lap serenely.

"How silly," she said, "as if anybody's stealing from the poor old man were reason enough why all the rest of the townspeople should stay away from him and leave him poor," she said. "What has that to do with my making him some coffee? Even if he'd been the one who stole-still I don't see the application to this particular question," she concluded.

"Well, there are other tales," insisted the crestfallen Florence, and, their coffee cups in their hands, the girls gathered around to tell Peggy many harrowing incidents connected with the great house back from the river, and she heard them quietly, piercing slices of bacon with her stick the while.

"Let's go up and cook him a dinner," she cried, springing to her feet when they had done. "We are a cooking cla.s.s, aren't we, and that's the best thing we do, isn't it? And here we go on just preparing all the good things back at school for us to eat ourselves-it seems, well, piggish. Wouldn't it be lovely to demonstrate our next lesson by bringing all the materials up to Gloomy House and cooking up a big, wonderful dinner, and having it with Mr. Huntington? We can't give him a million dollars or anything like that, but we can make one day a lot brighter-and, besides, I can't stand it to think of anyone hungry-_will_ you, girls? What do you say?"

She stood before them, lifting her slim hand for the vote, her eyes shining with eagerness to put her plan at once into execution.

The other girls gasped. Peggy, although she had been with them so short a time, had won a large place in their admiration.

"He wouldn't let us," reminded Florence, puckering her forehead thoughtfully. "Didn't I tell you he'd bite anybody, fairly, that dreamed of trying to offer him charity? Peggy, I believe you're partly right, though, maybe we could do something, but it would never work that way."

"Well," said Peggy promptly, sitting down to think it out, "how can it be done?"

For to Peggy life presented no unsolvable problems. She never thought of cluttering her joyous way with impossibilities. Once a plan seemed good to her it was only a question of How, and not of Whether.

"We might invite a lot of people to the school," timidly suggested one of the young cooks.

"He'd never come," Florence shook her head.

"Well, then," cried Peggy, "here we are! Let's give a series of dinners-at the houses of the trustees, and the different girls in the cla.s.s, just to show what we can do, and we'll have the accounts put in the town paper, so he'll see what we're doing, and _then_-" her eyes shone and she could hardly talk fast enough to let the girls see the glory of her new idea, "then we'll go to his house and ask permission to give _him_ one, and it won't be charity or anything, and it will be fun for everybody-oh, girls, isn't that gorgeous?"

"OOoo-oo," shivered Florence at the thought of really committing herself to such a daring decision. "Ye-es, I think we might do that. But we'd never have the courage to go and invite him."

"Peggy would," championed the timid one. "Let's appoint her a committee of one."

"Unanimously appointed a committee of one," shouted the other girls gleefully. "Peggy, how soon will all this be?"

Peggy laughingly flung aside her toasting stick, sprang erect, and tried vainly to smooth back her flying gold-toned hair. "Right-NOW!" she declared triumphantly, "we won't wait to give it to the trustees first."

"Good-by, Peggy," murmured Florence demurely, and the others drew closer together as Peggy actually turned her back on them and went up the slope to Gloomy House.

Surprised at her daring, overwhelmed by the boldness of the thing she had undertaken, they watched Peggy disappear over the top of the river bank.

CHAPTER IV-THE INSIDE OF GLOOMY HOUSE

Up the long walk to Gloomy House, her feet sinking in the wet leaves that had fallen from the branches overhead, Peggy went slowly, her heart pounding.

She was doing what no one else in town would have dared to do, and as she neared the old house, with its tumbled-down step, she began to wonder if perhaps she was afraid.

"Walk on, walk on," she whispered to herself, for she knew that if she hesitated for an instant she would run. And how could she go back and face the cooking cla.s.s if, after all her planning, she was a coward now?

So mechanically she walked on, and at last she found herself really ascending the creaking steps. When she stood on the porch with its leafless and ragged vines flapping in the wind a kind of chill unreality seemed to shut her in. She hurried to ring the bell so that someone-anyone-would come and she would not be alone. The bell was an old fashioned one, and as she rang she heard it jangling emptily through the house. It was certainly a very dismal way for callers to have to announce themselves.

When the unpleasant sound had ceased the house and everything about it settled back to silence again. This lasted and lasted. Peggy clutched nervously at her little red jacket. What if n.o.body would come at all?

There was no one TO come, except Mr. Huntington himself-and now he evidently wasn't going to. She might have known. She was overwhelmed with a sense of failure. Those lovely hot m.u.f.fins she had dreamed of preparing for him, that wonderful steak, smothered in onions, that delicious- Down the uncarpeted stairs inside she could hear the reluctant thud, thud of footsteps!

Oh, he _was_ coming.

Gratingly, the door swung open and a man's head looked cautiously out.

Peggy reflected that Mr. Huntington looked a great deal more scared than she was, and the thought helped a little.

"How do you do?" she asked faintly.

Mr. Huntington looked down at the vivid little figure in the red coat, and his eyes widened.

"A-how do you do?" he said mildly.

Well, he wasn't going to eat her, anyway, so she needn't be so frightened, Peggy decided with a breath of relief.

"Oh, Mr. Huntington," she said with a surprising increase of confidence, "I came-I came-I-came-" but the confidence had evaporated before she could find words to explain.

"I see you did," replied the old man, still mildly-and could she believe that twinkle in his eyes was a smile? Perhaps he didn't often have much to smile about, so that this was the best he could do.

"Won't you come in?" he invited, as an afterthought.

And Peggy followed him into Gloomy House.

The hall was stately, with its wide folding doors opening into the library on one side and a dining-room on the other. In it were an old tall clock and a black walnut hat-rack.