Annabel Sharp

“ It was a very long ride down to their destination, and Peggy had time to conjure up in her mind all the pictures she had ever seen of men in the navy, and battleships, and cannons, and such warlike objects. She thrilled to the thought of such a life, with its roving over the whole world after school was done, in those great gray floating forts of cruisers with their long sinister guns always ready for whatever might deserve their cruel attention. Even when women vote, she thought, there would be no such glory of open sea for them. ”

“ There had been ghosts of a kind in Huntington House right up to the time when Peggy and her fifty-nine little friends had driven them out forever. But there had never been a visible one before, never more than a haunting and accusing thought, not a red-cheeked, fresh-faced young man that somehow did not make Mr. Huntington think of a young man at all, as he sat watching him, but rather made him recall a woman, who had defied him in a moment of pride and gone away from him and out of his life, leaving no trace. ”

“ In her heart of hearts, perhaps, Peggy was remembering the occasion when she had dressed so carefully for the matinée that she didn’t get to the matinée at all, and was deciding that being on hand was really more important than making a good appearance.
She went to the hop, her spirits as light as her dancing feet, and when Harold Wilbering came eagerly over to her, she and he laughed at what had happened to her face, but he discovered what Peggy had not the least idea of for herself, that the sunburn effect was really rather becoming. It made her so vivid and so alive. ”

“ Forest and the teachers mustn’t see any light gleaming under their doors after ten o’clock. Soon their eyes grew heavy and the thoughts of fudge began to mix themselves up curiously with dreams.
They were two little tumbled over figures, fast asleep, Peggy on her couch and Katherine on hers, when the indignant guests, wondering why they had not been summoned to the party and deciding to come without waiting for the formal bidding, strode in upon them, with much flutter of silk and crepe kimono, and patter, patter of slippered feet. ”

“ The rose tree toppled an instant on the window-sill and then went down, flower pot, jardinière and all, into those singing, upturned faces, two stories below. There followed a frightful crashing sound, and then a stupefied silence.
Peggy, covering her face with her hands, turned and ran from the window, jumped into bed and pulled the sheet over her head.
“Oh, they’re dead, they’re dead, and I’ve killed them,” she thought miserably to herself.
She never wanted to hear a glee-club again, she never wanted to look into the face of a living soul. ”

“ I don’t someway think it’s just little Peggy Parsons with a red face that went through all that beautifulness, but instead I feel as if I’d been a fairy princess—the change that Cinderella experienced and all that—and, oh, how I do hate to wake up in the morning and realize that my coach and four has turned into pumpkin!”
“You looked nice in spite of your face, Peggy,” said Florence. “And, someway, everybody did seem to take an awful shine to you.” ”

“ When, seated at last, breathless and full of anticipation, in a taxi with their trunk up on top, the two girls waved through the window to those who had not yet gone, Peggy was too happy to speak, and two bright red spots burned in her dimpling cheeks and her eyes were as blue with excitement as electric sparks.
She had never ridden on a train—a Pullman—before with just girls as company. Her aunt had always taken her the few places she had been. ”

“ Forest’s very table, and sat, sweet and erect, with the soft candle light over her gold-glinting hair, in her radiant black eyes, and deepening the wonderful, sweeping color of her face. Her slender neck was delicate and proud as a princess’. The other girls’ fingers rested motionlessly on their soup spoons for an instant, during which they looked at their Peggy, spellbound. There was an air of graciousness, of regal beauty about her. There was no trace of the poor little Peggy who had once tried so hard to be a belle and had failed so miserably. ”

“ Girls, do hurry up the fudge, so that I can comfort myself for having been ‘foiled again.’”
The room, with the little whispering group of girls in it, some on the couches and some on the floor, garbed in all the delicate shades of boudoir attire, pale blue, pink, and rose, saffron yellow, lavender and dainty green; with the tiny spurts of golden candle flame dotted here and there on table and mantlepiece; with the hot, chocolate-smelling fudge bubbling away in the chafing-dish, looked like some fairy meeting place, with all the adorable fairies assembled. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII—SPRING AND ANNAPOLIS In the days that followed after the winter snow’s melting it seemed to Peggy that she was seeing the world by sunlight for the first time. The wonderful new lights that fell on everything, making even a roof or a clay bank a beautiful thing to behold, the subtle perfume that came drifting out on the breeze over orchard and woodland, the pink blossoms on the apple trees, all these things sent her about with her head in the clouds and a happiness at her heart that was just the joy of living. ”

“ Inside, in contrast to the bluster without, the library looked as cozy and homelike as a room could well be when only one person lives in it.
“Peggy,” said Katherine, “we may be going to disturb his peace for nothing.”
“Pshaw,” said Peggy, the light of high adventure shining in her eyes, “I’d rather have all sorts of surprises and disappointments and hurts and aches and shocks in my life than just have it all a kind of dull monotony, and I always give other people credit for feeling the same way. ”

“ Each of the vestibules was snow-powdered and slippery and cold—oh, so cold, and it seemed that always just as they came to one the train lurched and shook so as to nearly knock them off their feet.
And then, all of a sudden, there they were in the diner itself—but what was this mob—this perfect horde of other people doing there standing patiently lined up against the long narrow wall before they came to the table part of the car?
“Katherine!” cried Peggy in consternation, “they’re waiting to get in. We’ll starve before our turn comes!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Peggy agreed to this last plan as the best, and a few minutes later the two snuggled down into the cold sheets to be lulled almost instantly to sleep by the rhythmic motion of the train and the even sound of its metal click, click on the rails.
“Good-night,” murmured Peggy sleepily just before drifting off into the great shining world of dreams with their marvelous adventures that do not tire but rest and equip the dreamer afresh for the series of real events crowding in with the new day. ”

“ It was rare that so appreciative a young lady came to one of their early hops. The boys were quite accustomed to girls who had been to a great many more dances than they had, and who sometimes made them feel just a little young. But Peggy so doted on it all, was so carried away by the Marine band, so ready to laugh at their simplest and most time-worn jokes, so wonderingly surprised and naïvely gratified at their own open admiration of her, that she took like wildfire, and half the academy was talking about that little Parsons girl for a week thereafter. ”

“ Oh, tumbling air castles! oh, crashing dreams of happy endings! oh, sick and weak and trembling disappointment, and blank, meaningless future!
Peggy clasped her hands in her lap and leaned forward and stared at the boy with saddest reproach. He had certainly led them to believe he was the missing Huntington heir; he had been on their campus when the rose-tree fell, he had admitted playing the mandolin, he had an initial H., all just as the fortune teller had said, and yet he was no more Mr. Huntington’s grandson than she was! ”

“ The room settled down to a curious, stifling, nerve-racking silence while the prophetess gazed into her gleaming crystal.
She was breathing hard, and after a time it seemed to the two girls that a faint film or cloud went across the glassy brightness of the little globe, and this filminess took vague shape and disappeared.
Each girl thought as hard as she could. “How can we find Mr. Huntington’s grandson for him? Where is he now?” ”

“ How good people are to me! Oh, I must remember to be a regular angel to everybody I meet just to pay up for everybody’s always being so wonderful to me. Mr. Huntington, I love Parsons Court, and every house in it, and I’m so stingy I hate to rent any of them, but just want to come and live in them all myself, one after the other. But renting them means college, so please, Mr. Huntington, get me some tenants just as fast as you can,—and I never was so happy in my life, or didn’t ever expect to be!”
The old man’s face glowed with pleasure, and it was easy to see that he was as happy as Peggy. ”

“ Peggy was not yet familiar with the traditions of the town in which Andrews was situated. It seemed strange to her that after the girls had chosen this place with such unanimous enthusiasm they should assume such an air of discomfort and mystery now that they had come. She studied the old house, dignified even in its decay, with its trailing, rasping vines blowing against the pillars of the porch, and its sunken, uneven steps, and then quite unaccountably she shivered and hurried past it as fast as the other girls.
“I don’t want to come here for a picnic,” she panted, “if it’s all so queer. ”

“ The girls yawned rudely in classes, no matter what sharp words were spoken to correct them. They even stretched their young arms out side-ways and rested them on the next chairs. They turned wistful eyes away from their books out toward the sunlight-sprinkled world and wondered what was in it beyond those immediate roofs and trees that they could see.
Finally Peggy could stand it no longer. “Well, girls,” she announced one bright Saturday afternoon when there was no more school work to consider for the day, “we’re all going hunting for the source of something—we’re going exploring. ”

“ I always knew girls were mysterious persons, and that they lived in all sorts of unreal adventures. Am I scheduled to pass for an incognito villain of some sort—or—or prince—or anything? Because I tell you frankly, I ought to have been coached for my part beforehand if that’s the case. I can’t be expected to know all these things by intuition. Now I’ve made that pretty Katherine cry, and I angered you, and disgusted Mrs. Forest and yet, cross my heart, and as I live, I’ve been behaving just as nicely as I know how. Please, Peggy, clear up the mystery. ”

“ Home as only a Pullman car can be home to young people who adore traveling and have plenty of interesting experiences and company to while away the journey.
“Ah,” they cried, sinking back into their seats, “this is nice, isn’t it, after all that walk? How smoothly the train runs when you’re sitting still, but how jogglety it goes when you walk through the cars.”
“Oh, well,” said Peggy, with a mighty yawn and stretching her little locked hands before her lazily, “I’m perfectly happy, and I feel so contented I’m almost—sleepy.” ”

“ Forest, “you have been treated with too great lenience. If you had thought more of getting home on time you wouldn’t have stopped for the hot chocolate. At least that part wasn’t necessary.”
“Oh, but it rather was,” Peggy began, but looking at Mrs. Forest she wondered how she could be expected to understand. Could she ever have been a girl on snow-shoes, and have known the cold that gleamed in the frosty air and the hunger that comes after great exertion? No, what was the use of looking for understanding there? Peggy lightly tapped the floor with her foot. ”

“ Waiters are but waiters, and they have certain expectations and have grown accustomed to seeing them realized.
Back on the perilous journey through snow-coated vestibules the girls took their swaying way, laughing light-heartedly at each swerve of the train and trying to work out some Sherlock Holmes system by which they might be sure of finding their own car.
“I knew a girl once,” said Katherine, “whose car was taken off at Buffalo and hitched to another train while she was promenading on the platform outside, and all the baggage she had in the world went off to school, leaving her behind. ”

“ A woman from next door told them that Madame Blakey had gone away on her vacation to visit relatives.
“Well,” sighed Katherine in miserable disappointment, “I suppose other people have to have vacations too. But it does seem heartbreaking that all our plans should be spoiled and poor Mr. Huntington should never find his grandson, after all.”
“Yes,” agreed Peggy, brushing away the baffled tears, “isn’t there somebody else in town who—who sees things ahead?” ”

“ She got out her lovely little frock her aunt had recently sent her to be her best through the spring term. It was a deep, sweet pink—Peggy called it her candy dress—and tenderly she smoothed the dainty chiffon tunic over the crisp taffeta slip. There is a balm just in the touch of pretty clothes to dry the tears of any girl or woman unless her grief is very deep. Peggy felt the color stealing back into her cheeks, and her eyes were a-shine with admiration. ”

“ To be part of the great business of going away for vacation! Peggy’s heart thrilled every time an expressman tramped through the halls bearing some girl’s trunk on his broad shoulders. Any afternoon now they might come for her trunk, hers and Katherine’s, packed delightfully in one, after many friendly quarrels as to which one should have the left hand tray and which the right and who could lay her shoes in the lower compartment and which should take her manicure set, since one would do for both girls, and trunk room was precious. ”