The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Red Chimney, by Mary Finley Leonard

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Title: The Little Red Chimney
       Being the Love Story of a Candy Man

Author: Mary Finley Leonard

Release Date: March 18, 2005 [EBook #15406]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

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THE LITTLE RED CHIMNEY




[Illustration: THE CANDY MAN]




The Little Red Chimney

_Being the Love Story of a Candy Man_


BY MARY FINLEY LEONARD


Illustrations in Silhouette by KATHARINE GASSAWAY


New York--Duffield & Company--1914


Copyright, 1914, by DUFFIELD & COMPANY

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS


_CHAPTER I_

In which the curtain rises on the Candy Wagon, and the leading
characters are thrown together in a perfectly logical manner by Fate.

_CHAPTER II_

In which the Candy Man walks abroad in citizen's clothes, and is
mistaken for a person of wealth and social importance.

_CHAPTER III_

In which the Little Red Chimney appears on the horizon, but without
a clue to its importance. In which also the Candy Man has a glimpse
of high life and is foolishly depressed by it.

_CHAPTER IV_

In which the Candy Man again sees the Grey Suit, and Virginia continues
the story of the Little Red Chimney.

_CHAPTER V_

In which the double life of the heroine is explained, and Augustus
McAllister proves an alibi.

_CHAPTER VI_

In which Margaret Elizabeth is discussed at the Breakfast Table; in
which also, later on, she and Virginia and Uncle Bob talk before the
fire, and in which finally Margaret Elizabeth seeks consolation by
relating to Uncle Bob her adventure in the park.

_CHAPTER VII_

Shows how the Candy Wagon is visited in behalf of the Squirrel, and how
pride suffers a fall; how Miss Bentley turns to Vedantic Philosophy to
drown her annoyance, and discovers how hard it is to forget when you
wish to.

_CHAPTER VIII_

In which the Miser's past history is touched upon; which shows how his
solitude is again invaded, and how he makes a new friend.

_CHAPTER IX_

Shows how Miss Bentley and the Reporter take refuge in a cave, and how,
in the course of the conversation which follows, she hears something
which disposes her to feel more kindly toward the Candy Man; shows also
how Uncle Bob proves faithless to his trust and his niece finds herself
locked out in consequence.

_CHAPTER X_

In which the Little Red Chimney keeps Festival, and the Candy Man
receives an unexpected invitation.

_CHAPTER XI_

In which a radical change of atmosphere is at once noticed; which shows
how Miss Bentley repents of a too coming-on disposition, and lends an
ear to the advantages of wealth.

_CHAPTER XII_

Which shows Miss Bentley recovering from a fit of what Uncle Bob calls
Cantankerousness; in which a shipwrecked letter is brought to light, and
Dr. Prue is called again to visit the child of the Park Superintendent.

_CHAPTER XIII_

In which the Candy Man relates his story, and the Miser comes upon
Volume I of the shabby book with the funny name.

_CHAPTER XIV_

Shows how Mrs. Gerrard Pennington, unhappy and distraught, beseeches
Uncle Bob to help her save Margaret Elizabeth; also how Mr. Gerrard
Pennington comes to the rescue, and how in the end his wife submits
gracefully to the inevitable, which is not so bad after all.

_CHAPTER XV_

In which the Fairy Godmother Society is again mentioned, among other
things.




ILLUSTRATIONS


THE CANDY MAN

MARGARET ELIZABETH

VIRGINIA

DR. PRUE

UNCLE BOB

THE MISER

COUSIN AUGUSTUS

MRS. GERRARD PENNINGTON




       *       *       *       *       *

                      To
             George Madden Martin

       *       *       *       *       *



THE LITTLE RED CHIMNEY




CHAPTER ONE

_In which the curtain rises on the Candy Wagon, and the leading
characters are thrown together in a perfectly logical manner by
Fate_.


The Candy Wagon stood in its accustomed place on the Y.M.C.A. corner.
The season was late October, and the leaves from the old sycamores, in
league with the east wind, after waging a merry war with the janitor all
morning, had swept, a triumphant host, across the broad sidewalk, to lie
in heaps of golden brown along the curb and beneath the wheels of the
Candy Wagon. In the intervals of trade, never brisk before noon, the
Candy Man had watched the game, taking sides with the leaves.

Down the steps of the Y.M.C.A. building sauntered the Reporter.
Perceiving the Candy Wagon at the curb he paused, scrutinising it
jauntily, through a monocle formed by a thumb and finger.

The wagon, freshly emblazoned in legends of red, yellow and blue which
advertised the character and merits of its wares, stood with its
horseless shafts turned back and upward, in something of a prayerful
attitude. The Reporter, advancing, lifted his arms in imitation, and
recited: "Confident that upon investigation you will find everything as
represented, we remain Yours to command, in fresh warpaint." He seated
himself upon the adjacent carriage block and grinned widely at the
Candy Man.

In spite of a former determination to confine his intercourse with the
Reporter to strictly business lines, the Candy Man could not help a
responsive grin.

The representative of the press demanded chewing gum, and receiving it,
proceeded to remove its threefold wrappings and allow them to slip
through his fingers to the street. "Women," he said, with seeming
irrelevance and in a tone of defiance, "used to be at the bottom of
everything; now they're on top."

The Candy Man was quick at putting two and two together. "I infer you
are not in sympathy with the efforts of the Woman's Club and the Outdoor
League to promote order and cleanliness in our home city," he observed,
his eye on the débris so carelessly deposited upon the public
thoroughfare.

"Right you are. Your inference is absolutely correct. The foundations of
this American Commonwealth are threatened, and the _Evening Record_
don't stand for it. Life's made a burden, liberty curtailed, happiness
pursued at the point of the dust-pan. Here is the Democratic party of
the State pledged to School Suffrage. The Equal Rights Association is to
meet here next month, and--the mischief is, the pretty ones are taking
it up! The first thing you know the Girl of All Others will be saying,
'Embrace me, embrace my cause.' Why, my Cousin Augustus met a regular
peach of a girl at the country club,--visiting at the Gerrard
Penningtons', don't you know, and almost the first question she asked
him was did he believe in equal rights?" The Reporter paused for breath,
pushing his hat back to the farthest limit and regarding the Candy Man
curiously. "It is funny," he added, "how much you look like my Cousin
Augustus. I wonder now if he could have been twins, and one stolen by
the gypsies? You don't chance to have been stolen in infancy?"

This innocent question annoyed the Candy Man, although he ignored it,
murmuring something to the effect that the Reporter's talents pointed to
the stump. It might have been a guilty conscience or merely impatience
at such flagrant nonsense, for surely he could not reasonably object
to resembling Cousin Augustus. The Candy Man was a well-enough looking
young fellow in his white jacket and cap, but nothing to brag of, that
he need be haughty about a likeness to one so far above him in the
social scale, whom in fact he had never seen.

The Reporter lingered in thoughtful silence while some westbound
transfers purchased refreshment, then as a trio of theological students
paused at the Candy Wagon, he restored his hat to its normal position
and strolled away. On the Y.M.C.A. corner business had waked up.

For some time the Candy Wagon continued to reap a harvest from the rush
of High School boys and younger children. Morning became afternoon,
the clouds which the east wind had been industriously beating up
gathered in force, and a fine rain began to fall. The throng on the
street perceptibly lessened; the Candy Man had leisure once more to
look about him.

A penetrating mist was veiling everything; the stone church, the
seminary buildings, the tall apartment houses, the few old residences
not yet crowded out, the drug store, the confectionery--all were softly
blurred. The asphalt became a grey lake in which all the colour and
movement of the busy street was reflected, and upon whose bosom the
Candy Wagon seemed afloat. As the Candy Man watched, gleams of light
presently began to pierce the mist, from a hundred windows, from passing
street cars and cabs, from darting machines now transformed into
strange, double-eyed demons. It was a scene of enchantment, and with
pleasure he felt himself part of it, as in his turn he lit up his wagon.

The traffic officer, whose shrill whistle sounded continually above the
clang of the trolley cars and the hoarse screams of impatient machines,
probably viewed the situation differently. Given slippery streets,
intersecting car lines, an increasing throng of vehicles and
pedestrians, with a fog growing denser each moment, and the utmost
vigilance is often helpless to avert an accident. So it was now.

The Candy Man did not actually see the occurrence, but later it
developed that an automobile, in attempting to turn the corner,
skidded, grazing the front of a car which had stopped to discharge some
passengers, then crashing into a telegraph pole on the opposite side of
the street. What he did see was the frightened rush of the crowd to the
sidewalk, and in the rush, a girl, just stepping from the car, caught
and carried forward and jostled in such a manner that she lost her
footing and fell almost beneath the wheels of the Candy Wagon, and
dangerously near the hoofs of a huge draught horse, brought by its
driver to a halt in the nick of time.

The Candy Man was out and at her side in an instant, assisting her
to rise. The panic swept past them, leaving only a long-legged child
in a red tam, and a sad-faced elderly man in its wake. The Candy Man
had seen all three before. The wearer of the red tam was one of the
apartment-house children, the sad man was popularly known to the
neighbourhood as the Miser, and the girl, to whose assistance he had
sprung--well, he had seen her on two previous occasions.

As she stood in some bewilderment looking ruefully at the mud on her
gloves and skirt, the merest glance showed her to be the sort of girl
any one might have been glad to help.

"Thank you, I am not hurt--only rather shaken," she said in answer to
the Candy Man.

"Here's your bag," announced the long-legged child, fishing it out of
the soggy mass of leaves beneath the wagon. "And you need not worry
about your skirt. Take it to Bauer's just round the corner; they'll
clean it," she added.

The owner of the bag received it and the accompanying advice with an
adorable smile in which there was merriment as well as appreciation.
The Miser plucked the Candy Man by the sleeve and asked if the young
lady did not wish a cab.

She answered for herself. "Thank you, no; I am quite all right--only
muddy. But was it a bad accident? What happened?"

The Miser crossed the street where the crowd had gathered, to
investigate, and returning reported the chauffeur probably done for.
While he was gone the conductor of the street car appeared in quest of
the names and addresses of everybody within a radius of ten blocks. In
this way the Candy Man learned that her name was Bentley. She gave it
reluctantly, as persons do on such occasions, and he failed to catch
her street and number.

"I'm very sorry! I suppose there is nothing one can do?" she exclaimed,
apropos of the chauffeur, and the next the Candy Man knew she was
walking away in the mist hand in hand with the long-legged child.

"An unusually charming face," the Miser remarked, raising his umbrella.

To the sober mind "unusually charming" would seem a not unworthy
compliment, but the Candy Man, as he resumed his place in the wagon,
smiled scornfully at what he was pleased to consider its grotesque
inadequacy. If he had anything better to offer, the Miser did not stay
to hear it, but with a courteous "good evening" disappeared in his
turn in the mist. An ambulance carried away the injured man, the crowd
dispersed; the remains of the machine were towed away to a near-by
garage. Night fell; the throng grew less, the rain gathered courage and
became a downpour. There would be little doing in the way of business
to-night.

As he made ready for early closing the Candy Man fell to thinking of the
girl whose name was Bentley. Not that the name interested him save as a
means of further identification. It was a phrase used by the Reporter
this morning that occurred to him now as peculiarly applicable to her.
The Girl of All Others! He rolled it as a sweet morsel under his tongue,
undisturbed by the reflection that such descriptive titles are at
present overworked--in dreams one has no need to be original.

Neither did it strike him as incongruous that he should have seen her
first in the grocery kept by Mr. Simms, who catered to the needs of such
as got their own breakfasts, and whose boiled ham was becoming famous,
because it was really done. He went back to the experience, dwelling
with pleasure upon each detail of it, even his annoyance at the grocer's
daughter, who exchanged crochet patterns with the tailor's wife, after
the manner of a French exercise, and ignored him. It was early and
business had not yet begun on the Y.M.C.A. corner; still he could not
wait forever. The grocer himself, who was attending to the wants of a
lean and hungry-looking student, had just handed his rolls and smoked
sausage across the counter, with a cheery "Breakfast is ready, ring the
bell," when the door opened and the Girl of All Others came in.

She was tallish, but not very tall, and somewhat slight. She wore a grey
suit--the same which had suffered this afternoon from contact with the
street, and a soft felt hat of the same colour jammed down anyhow on her
bright hair and pinned with a pinkish quill--or so it looked. The face
beneath the bright hair was---- But at this point in his recollections
the Candy Man all but lost himself in a maze of adjectives and adverbs.
We know, at least, how the long-legged child ran to help, and finally
went off hand in hand with her, and what the Miser said of her, and
after all the best the Candy Man could do was to go back to the
Reporter's phrase.

He had withdrawn a little behind a stack of breakfast foods where he
could watch her, wondering that the clerks did not drop their several
customers without ceremony and fly to do her bidding. She stood beside
the counter and made overtures to a large Maltese cat who reposed there
in solemn majesty. Beside the Maltese rose a pyramid of canned goods,
and a placard announced, "Of interest to light house keepers." Upon this
her eyes rested in evident surprise. "I didn't know there were any
lighthouses in this part of the country," she said half aloud.

[Illustration: MARGARET ELIZABETH]

The Maltese laid a protesting paw upon her arm. It was not, however, the
absurdity of her remark, but the cessation of her caresses he protested
against. At the same moment her eyes met those of the Candy Man, across
the stack of breakfast foods. His were laughing, and hers were instantly
withdrawn. He saw her colour mounting as she exclaimed, addressing the
cat, "How perfectly idiotic!"

He longed to assure her it was a perfectly natural mistake, the placard
being but an amateurish affair; but he lacked the courage.

And then the grocer, having disposed of another customer, advanced to
serve her, and the grocer's daughter, it seemed, was also at leisure;
and though he would have preferred to watch the Girl of All Others doing
the family marketing in a most competent manner, a thoughtful finger
upon her lip, the Candy Man was forced to attend to his own business.
In selecting a basket of grapes and ordering them sent to St. Mary's
Hospital, he presently lost sight of her.

Once since then she had passed his corner on her way up the street.
That was all until to-night. It seemed probable that she lived in the
neighbourhood. Perhaps the Reporter would know.

Just here the recollection that he was a Candy Man brought him up short.
His bright dreams began to fade. The Girl of All Others should of course
be able to recognise true worth, even in a Candy Wagon, but such is the
power of convention he was forced to own to himself it was more than
possible she might not. Or if she did, her friends----

But these disheartening reflections were curtailed by the sudden
appearance of a stout, grey horse under the conduct of a small boy. The
shafts were lowered, the grey horse placed between them, and, after a
few more preliminaries, the Candy Wagon, Candy Man and all, were removed
from the scene of action, leaving the Y.M.C.A. corner to the rain and
the fog, the gleaming lights, and the ceaseless clang of the trolley
cars.




CHAPTER TWO

_In which the Candy Man walks abroad in citizen's clothes, and is
mistaken for a person of wealth and social importance._


The Candy Man strolled along a park path. The October day was crisp, the
sky the bluest blue, the sunny landscape glowing with autumn's fairest
colours. It was a Sunday morning not many days after the events of the
first chapter, and back in the city the church bells were ringing for
eleven o'clock service.

In citizen's clothes, and well-fitting ones at that, the Candy Man was
a presentable young fellow. If his face seemed at first glance a trifle
stern, this sternness was offset by the light in his eyes; a steady,
purposeful glow, through which played at the smallest excuse a humorous
twinkle.

After the ceaseless stir of the Y.M.C.A. corner, the stillness of the
park was most grateful. At this hour on Sunday, if he avoided the golf
grounds, it was to all intents his own. His objective point was a rustic
arbour hung with rose vines and clematis, where was to be had a view of
the river as it made an abrupt turn around the opposite hills. Here he
might read, or gaze and dream, as it pleased him, reasonably secure from
interruption once he had possession.

The Candy Man breathed deeply, and smiled to himself. It was a day to
inspire confident dreams, for the joy of fulfilment was over the land.
Was it the sudden fear that some other dreamer might be before him, or
a subconscious prevision of what actually awaited him, that caused him
to quicken his steps as he neared the arbour? However it may have been,
as he took at a bound the three steps which led up to it, he came with
startling suddenness upon Miss Bentley entering from the other side,
her arms full of flowers. Their eyes met in a flash of recognition
which there was no time to control. She bowed, not ungraciously, yet
distantly, and with a faint puzzled frown on her brow, and he, as he
lifted his hat, spoke her name, which, as he was not supposed to know
it, he had no business to do; then they both laughed at the way in which
they had bounced in at the same moment from opposite directions.

With some remark about the delightful day, the Candy Man, as a gentleman
should, tried to pretend he was merely passing through, and though it
was but a feeble performance, Miss Bentley should have accepted it
without protest, then all would have been well. Instead, she said, still
with that puzzled half frown, "Don't go, I am only waiting here a moment
for my cousin, who has stopped at the superintendent's cottage." She
motioned over her shoulder to a vine-covered dwelling just visible
through the trees.

"Please do not put it in that way," he protested. "As if your being here
did not add tremendously to my desire to remain. I am conscious of
rushing in most unceremoniously upon you, and----"

Hesitating there, hat in hand, his manners were disarmingly frank. Miss
Bentley laughed again as she deposited her flowers, a mass of pink and
white cosmos, upon a bench, and sat down beside them. She seemed willing
to have him put it as he liked. She wore the same grey suit and soft
felt hat, jammed down any way on her bright hair and pinned with a
pinkish quill, and was somehow, more emphatically than before, the Girl
of All Others.

How could a Candy Man be expected to know what he was about? What wonder
that his next remark should be a hope that she had suffered no ill
effects from the accident?

"None at all, thank you," Miss Bentley replied, and the puzzled
expression faded. It was as if she inwardly exclaimed, "Now I know!"
"Aunt Eleanor," she added, "was needlessly alarmed. I seem rather given
to accidents of late." Thus saying she began to arrange her flowers.

The Candy Man dropped down on the step where the view--of Miss
Bentley--was most charming, as she softly laid one bloom upon another in
caressing fashion, her curling lashes now almost touching her cheek, now
lifted as she looked away to the river, or bent her gaze upon the
occupant of the step.

"Do you often come here?" she asked, adding when he replied that this
was the third time, that she thought he had rather an air of
proprietorship.

He laughed at this, and explained how he had set out to pay a visit to
a sick boy at St. Mary's Hospital, but had allowed the glorious day to
tempt him to the park.

Below them on the terraced hillside a guard sat reading his paper;
across the meadow a few golfers were to be seen against the horizon.
All about them the birds and squirrels were busily minding their own
affairs; above them smiled the blue, blue sky, and the cousin, whoever
he or she might be, considerately lingered.

Like the shining river their talk flowed on. Beginning like it as a
shallow stream, it broadened and deepened on its way, till presently
fairy godmothers became its theme.

Miss Bentley was never able to recall what led up to it. The Candy Man
only remembered her face, as, holding a crimson bloom against her cheek,
she smiled down upon him thoughtfully, and asked him to guess what she
meant to do when some one left her a fortune. "I have a strange
presentiment that some one is going to," she said.

"How delightful!" he exclaimed, but did not hazard a guess, and she
continued without giving him a chance: "I shall establish a Fairy
Godmother Fund, the purpose of which shall be the distribution of good
times; of pleasures large and small, among people who have few or none."

"It sounds," was the Candy Man's comment, "like the minutes of the first
meeting. Please explain further. How will you select your beneficiaries?"

"I don't like your word," she objected. "Beneficiaries and fairy
godmothers somehow do not go together. Still, I see what you mean, and
while I have not as yet worked out the plan, I'm confident it could be
managed. Suppose we know a poor teacher, for instance, who has nothing
left over from her meagre salary after the necessary things are provided
for, and who is, we'll say, hungry for grand opera. We would enclose
opera tickets with a note asking her to go and have a good time, signed,
'Your Fairy Godmother,' and with a postscript something like this, 'If
you cannot use them, hand them on to another of my godchildren.' Don't
you think she would accept them?"

Under the spell of those lovely, serious eyes, the Candy Man rather
thought she would.

"Of course," Miss Bentley went on, "it must be a secret society, never
mentioned in the papers, unknown to those you call its beneficiaries.
In this way there will be no occasion or demand for gratitude. No
obligations will be imposed upon the recipients--that word is as bad as
yours--let's call them godchildren--and the fairy godmother will have
her fun in giving the good times, without bothering over whether they
are properly grateful."

"You seem to have a grievance against gratitude," said the Candy Man
laughing.

"I have," she owned.

"There are people who contend that there is little or none of it in the
world," he added.

"And I am not sure it was meant there should be--much of it, I mean. It
is an emotion--would you call it an emotion?"

"You might," said the Candy Man.

"Well, an emotion that turns to dust and ashes when you try to
experience it, or demand it of others," concluded Miss Bentley with
emphasis. "And you needn't laugh," she added.

The Candy Man disclaimed any thought of such a thing. He was profoundly
serious. "It is really a great idea," he said. "A human agency whose
benefits could be received as we receive those of Nature or
Providence--as impersonally."

She nodded appreciatively. "You understand." And they were both aware
of a sense of comradeship scarcely justified by the length of their
acquaintance.

"May I ask your ideas as to the amount of this fund?" he said.

She considered a moment. "Well, say a hundred thousand," she suggested.

"You are expecting a large bequest, then."

"An income of five thousand would not be too much," insisted Miss
Bentley. "We should wish to do bigger things than opera tickets, you
know."

"There are persons who perhaps need a fairy godmother, whom money
cannot help," the Candy Man continued thoughtfully. "There's an old
man--not so old either--a sad grey man, whom the children on our block
call the Miser. I am not an adept in reading faces, but I am sure there
is nothing mean in his. It is only sad. I get interested in people,"
he added.

"So do I," cried his companion. "And of course, you are right. The Fairy
Godmother Society would have to have more than one department. Naturally
opera tickets would not do your man any good--unless we could get him to
send them."

They laughed over this clever idea, and the Candy Man went on to say
that there were lonely people in the world, who, through no fault of
their own, were so circumstanced as to be cut off from those common
human relationships which have much to do with the flavour of life.

"I don't quite understand," Miss Bentley began. But these young persons
were not to be left to settle the affairs of the universe in one
morning. A handkerchief waved in the distance by a stoutish lady,
interrupted. "There's Cousin Prue," Miss Bentley cried, springing to
her feet.

Hastily dividing her flowers into two bunches, she thrust one upon the
Candy Man. "For your sick boy. You won't mind, as it isn't far. I have
so enjoyed talking to you, Mr. McAllister. I shall hope to see you soon
again. Aunt Eleanor often speaks of you."

This sudden descent to the conventional greatly embarrassed the Candy
Man, but he had no time for a word. Miss Bentley was off like a flash,
across the grass, before he could collect his scattered wits. He looked
after her, till, in company with the stout lady, she disappeared from
view. Then with a whimsical expression on his countenance, he took a
leather case from his breast pocket, and opening it glanced at one of
the cards within. It was as if he doubted his own identity and wished
to be reassured.

The name engraved on the card was not McAllister, but Robert Deane
Reynolds.




CHAPTER THREE

_In which the Little Red Chimney appears on the horizon, but without
a clue to its importance. In which also the Candy Man has a glimpse of
high life and is foolishly depressed by it._


Starting from the Y.M.C.A. corner, walking up the avenue a block, then
turning south, you came in a few steps to a modest grey house with a
grass plat in front of it, a freshly reddened brick walk, and flower
boxes in its windows. It was modest, not merely in the sense of being
unpretentious, but also in that of a restrained propriety. You felt it
to be a dwelling of character, wherein what should be done to-day, was
never put off till to-morrow; where there was a place for everything and
everything in it. Yet mingling with this propriety was an all-pervading
cheer that appealed strongly to the homeless passerby.

The grey house presented a gable end to the street, and stretched a
wing comfortably on either side. In one of these was a glass door, with
"Office Hours 10-1," which caused you to glance again at the sign on the
iron gate: "Dr. Prudence Vandegrift."

The other ell, which was of one story, had a double window, before
which a rose bush grew, and when the blinds were up you had sometimes a
glimpse of an opposite window, indicating that it was but one room deep.
From its roof rose a small chimney that stood out from all the other
chimneys, because, while they were grey like the house and its slate
roof, it was red.

Strolling by in a leisure hour the Candy Man had remarked it and
wondered why, and found himself continuing to wonder. Somehow that
little red chimney took hold on his imagination. It was a magical
chimney, poetic, alluring, at once a cheering and a depressing little
chimney, for it stirred him to delicious dreams, which, when they faded,
left him forlorn.

It was to Virginia he owed enlightenment. Virginia was the long-legged
child who had fished Miss Bentley's bag from beneath the Candy Wagon,
the indomitable leader of the Apartment House Pigeons, as the Candy Man
had named them.

The Apartment House did not exclude children, neither did it encourage
them, and when their individual quarters became too contracted to
contain their exuberance, they perforce sought the street. Like pigeons
they would descend in a flock, here, there, everywhere; perching in a
blissful row before the soda fountain in the drug store; or if the state
of the public purse did not warrant this, the curbstone and the wares
of the Candy Wagon were cheerfully substituted. By virtue no doubt of
her long legs and masterful spirit, Virginia ruled the flock. Under her
guidance they made existence a weariness to the several janitors on
the block.

As in defiance of law and order they circled one day on their roller
skates, down the avenue and up the broad alley behind the Y.M.C.A.,
round and round, Virginia issued her orders: "You all go on, I want to
talk to the Candy Man."

Being without as yet any theories, consistently democratic, she regarded
him as a friend and brother. A state of society in which the position of
Candy Man was next the throne, would have seemed perfectly logical to
Virginia.

[Illustration: VIRGINIA]

"You don't look much like Tim," she volunteered, dangling her legs from
the carriage block. Her hair was dark and severely bobbed; her miniature
nose was covered with freckles, and she squinted a little.

"No?" responded the Candy Man.

"Tim was Irish," she continued.

During business hours conversation of necessity took on a disjointed
character. Unless you had great power of concentration you forgot in the
intervals what you had been talking about. When a group of High School
boys had been served and had gone their hilarious way Virginia began
again. "You know the house with the Little Red Chimney?" she asked.

The Candy Man did.

"Well, a nice old man named Uncle Bob lives there, and I asked him why
that chimney was red, and he said because it was new. A branch of a tree
fell on the old one. The tree where the squirrel house is, you know."

The Candy Man remembered the tree.

"He said the doctor was going to have it painted, but he kind of liked
it red, and so did her ladyship."

"And who might her ladyship be?" the Candy Man inquired.

"That's what I asked him, and he said, 'You come over and see,' and
then he said--now listen to this, for it's just like a story." Virginia
lifted an admonishing finger. "He said, whenever I saw smoke coming out
of that Little Red Chimney, I might know her ladyship had come to town.
You'd better believe I'm going to watch. And what do you think! I can
see it from our dining-room window!" she concluded.

"Most interesting," said the Candy Man politely, without the least idea
how interesting it really was.

Virginia's gaze suddenly fastened on a small book lying on the seat of
the Candy Wagon, and she had seized it before its owner could protest.
"What a funny name," she said. "'E p i c t e t u s.' What does that
spell? And what made you cut a hole in this page? It looks like a
window."

The page was a fly leaf, from which a name, possibly that of a former
owner, had been removed. Below it the Candy Man's own name was now
written.

"It was so when I got it," he answered, holding out his hand for it. He
had no mind to have his book in any other keeping, for somewhere within
its leaves lay a crimson flower.

Before she returned it Virginia examined the back. "Vol. I, what does
that mean?" she asked, and without waiting for an answer she tossed it
back to him, and ran to join the other pigeons.

From this time Virginia began to be almost as constant a visitor as
the Reporter. She had a way of bursting into conversation without any
preface whatever, speaking entirely from the fullness of her heart at
the moment.

"I'd give anything in the world to be pretty," she remarked one day,
resting her school bag on the carriage block and sighing deeply.

"But now honestly," said the Candy Man, regarding her gravely, "it seems
to me you are a very nice-looking little girl, and who knows but you may
turn out a great beauty some day? That is the way it happens in story
books."

Virginia returned his gaze steadily. "Do you really think there is any
chance? You are not laughing?"

He assured her he was intensely serious.

"Well, you are the first person who ever told me that. Uncle Harry said,
'Is it possible, Cornelia, that this is your child?' Cornelia is my
mother, and she is a beauty. My brother is awfully good looking, too.
Everybody thinks he ought to have been the girl. I'll tell you who I
want to look like when I grow up. Don't you know that young lady who
fell in the mud?"

Oh, yes, the Candy Man knew, and applauded Virginia's ambition. He would
have been pleased to enlarge on the subject, even to the extent of
neglecting business, but just as she began to be interesting Virginia
remembered an errand to the drug store, and ran away.

That Sunday morning meeting with Miss Bentley had been reviewed by the
Candy Man from every possible standpoint, and always, in conclusion,
with the same questions. Could he have done otherwise? What would she
think when she discovered her mistake? Who was his unknown double?

The opportunity offering, he made some guarded inquiries of the
Reporter.

"Bentley?" repeated that gentleman, as he sharpened a bright yellow
pencil. "Seem to have heard the name somewhere recently."

It was a matter of no particular importance to the Candy Man. He had
chanced to hear the name given to the conductor by the young lady who
was thrown down the night of the accident, and wondered----

The Reporter, who wasn't listening, here exclaimed: "I have it! It was
this A.M. Maimie McHugh was interviewing Mrs. Gerrard Pennington over
the office 'phone in regard to a luncheon she is giving this week in
honour of her niece. Said niece's name me-thinks was Bentley. You will
see it all in the social notes later. Covers for twelve, decorations in
pink, La France roses, place cards from somewhere." He paused to laugh.
"Maimie was doing it up brown, but she lacks tact. What does she do but
ask for Miss Bentley's picture for the Saturday edition! I tried to stop
her, but it was too late. You should have heard the 'phone buzz. 'My
niece's picture in the _Evening Record_!' 'I don't care, mean old
thing,' says Maimie, when she hung up. 'Nicer people than she is do it,
and are glad to. 'That's all right, my honey,' I told her, 'but there
are nice people and nice people, and it's up to you to know the variety
you are dealing with, unless you like to be snubbed.' Still," the
Reporter added reflectively, "Mrs. Gerrard Pennington and little McHugh
can't afford to quarrel. After the luncheon Mrs. G.P. will probably send
Maimie a pair of long white gloves, and when their pristine freshness
has departed, Maimie will wear them to the office a time or two."

The Candy Man wished to know who Mrs. Gerrard Pennington was, anyway.

"She, my ignorant friend, is a four-ply Colonial Dame, so to speak.
Distinguished grandfathers to burn, and the dough to support them,
unlike another friend of mine who possessed every qualification needed
to become a C.D. except on the clothes line."

"The joke," observed the Candy Man, "is old, but worth repeating. But did
I understand you to say _another_ friend? And am I to infer----?"

"You are far too keen for a Candy Man," said the Reporter, laughing.
"Mrs. G.P. is friendly with the wealthy branch of our family. She
regards my Cousin Augustus as a son. Now I think of it, your Miss
Bentley cannot be her niece. She could scarcely fall out of a street
car. A victoria or a limousine would be necessary in her case."

The Candy Man did not see his way clear to disclaim proprietorship in
Miss Bentley, so let it pass. Certainly, on other grounds his Miss
Bentley, to call her so, could not be Mrs. Gerrard Pennington's niece.
Not that she lacked the charm to grace any position however high, but
her simplicity and friendliness, the fact that she walked in the country
with a stoutish relative who was intimate with the family of the park
superintendent, the marketing he had witnessed, all went to prove his
point.

Yet on the occasion of a fashionable noon wedding at the stone church
near the Y.M.C.A. corner, all this impressive evidence was brought to
naught. In the crush of machines and carriages the Candy Wagon was all
but engulfed in high life. When the crowd surged out after the bridal
party, the congestion for a few minutes baffled the efforts of the corps
of police.

The Candy Man, looking on with much amusement at the well-dressed
throng, presently received a thrill at the sound of a clear young voice
exclaiming, "Here is the car, Aunt Eleanor--over here."

The haughtiest of limousines had taken up its station just beyond the
Candy Wagon, and toward this the owner of the voice was piloting a
majestic and breathless personage. If the Candy Man could have doubted
his ears, he could not doubt his eyes. Here was the grace, the sparkle,
the everything that made her his Miss Bentley, the Girl of All
Others--except the grey suit. Now she wore velvet, and wonderful white
plumes framed her face and touched her bright hair. No, there was no
mistaking her. Reviewing the evidence he found it baffling. That absurd
exclamation about lighthouses alone might be taken as indicating an
unfamiliarity with the humbler walks of life.

The Reporter was at this time in daily attendance upon a convention in
progress in a neighbouring hall, and he rarely failed to stop at the
carriage block and pass the time of day on his way to and fro.

"Ah ha!" he exclaimed, on one of these occasions, after perusing in
silence the first edition of the _Evening Record_; "I see my Cousin
Augustus, on his return from New York, is to give a dinner dance in
honour of Mrs. Gerrard Pennington's niece."

"I appreciate your innocent pride in Cousin Augustus, but may I inquire
if by chance he possesses another name?" The Candy Man spoke with
uncalled-for asperity.

"Sure," responded the Reporter, with a quizzical glance at his
questioner; "several of 'em. Augustus Vincent McAllister is what he
calls himself every day."




CHAPTER FOUR

_In which the Candy Man again sees the Grey Suit, and Virginia
continues the story of the Little Red Chimney._


It was Saturday afternoon, possibly the very next Saturday, or at most
the Saturday after that, and the Candy Wagon was making money. The day
of the week was unmistakable, for the working classes were getting home
early; fathers of families with something extra for Sunday in paper bags
under their arms. And the hat boxes! They passed the Candy Man's corner
by the hundreds. Every feminine person in the big apartment houses must
be intending to wear a new hat to-morrow.

There was something special going on at the Country Club--the Candy Man
had taken to reading the social column--and the people of leisure and
semi-leisure were to be well represented there, to judge by the machines
speeding up the avenue; among them quite probably Miss Bentley and Mr.
Augustus McAllister.

This not altogether pleasing reflection had scarcely taken shape in his
mind, when, in the act of handing change to a customer, he beheld Miss
Bentley coming toward him; without a doubt his Miss Bentley this time,
for she wore the grey suit and the felt hat, jammed down any way on her
bright hair and pinned with the pinkish quill. She was not alone. By
her side walked a rather shabby, elderly man, with a rosy face, whose
pockets bulged with newspapers, and who carried a large parcel. She was
looking at him and he was looking at her, and they were both laughing.
Comradeship of the most delightful kind was indicated.

Without a glance in the direction of the Candy Wagon they passed. Well,
at any rate she wasn't at the Country Club. But how queer!

Earlier in the afternoon Virginia had gone by in dancing-school array,
accompanied by an absurdly youthful mother. "I've got something to tell
you," she called, and the Candy Man could see her being reproved for
this unseemly familiarity.

His curiosity was but mildly stirred; indeed, having other things to
think of, he had quite forgotten the incident, when on Monday she
presented herself swinging her school bag.

"Say," she began, "I have found out about her Ladyship and the Little
Red Chimney."

"Oh, have you?" he answered vaguely.

Virginia, resting her bag on the carriage block, looked disappointed.
"I have been crazy to tell you, and now you don't care a bit."

"Indeed I do," the Candy Man protested. "I'm a trifle absent-minded,
that's all."

Thus reassured she began: "Don't you know I told you I could see
that chimney from our dining-room, and that I was going to watch it?
Well, the other day at lunch I happened to look toward the window, and
I jumped right out of my chair and clapped my hands and said, 'It's
smoking, it's smoking!' There was company, and mother said, 'Good
gracious, Virginia! what's smoking? You do make me so nervous!' Then
I was sorry I'd said anything, because she wouldn't understand, you
know. Well, after lunch I took one of Ted's balls, and went over to
Uncle Bob's, and I got a little darkey boy to throw it in the yard, and
then I went in to look for it. You see if Uncle Bob wasn't there and
anybody asked me what I was doing, I could say I was looking for my
brother's ball."

"I fear you are a deep one," remarked the Candy Man.

"No, I'm not, but I'm rather good at thinking of things," Virginia owned
complacently. "And then," she continued, "I poked around the rose bush,
and peeped in at the window, and sure enough she was there, brushing the
hearth. She saw me and came to the window, and when I ran away, 'cause
I thought maybe she was mad, she rapped, and then opened the window and
called: 'Come in, little girl, and talk to me.' And now who do you think
she turned out to be?"

A suspicion had been deepening in the Candy Man's breast for the last
few moments. His heart actually thumped. "Not--you don't mean----?"

Virginia nodded violently. "Yes, the lady who fell and got muddy. And
she's perfectly lovely, and I'm going there again. She asked me to."

Why, oh, why should such luck fall to the lot of a long-legged,
freckle-nosed little girl, and not to him, the Candy Man wondered.
He burned to ask innumerable questions, but compromised on one. Did
Virginia know whether or not she had come to stay?

"Why, I guess so. She didn't have her hat on, and she was cleaning
up--dusting, you know, and taking things out of a box."

"What sort of things?"

"Books and sofa pillows and pictures. I helped her, and by and by Uncle
Bob came in."

"And what did he say?" asked the Candy Man, just to keep her going.

"Why, he said, didn't he tell me so? And wasn't it great to have her
ladyship there?"

"And what did her ladyship say?"

"She said he was a dear, and I forget what else. Oh, but listen! I'll
bet you can't guess what her name is."

He couldn't. He had racked his brain for a name at once sweet enough and
possessing sufficient dignity. He had not found it for the good reason
that no such name has been invented.

"It's a long name," said Virginia, "as long as mine. I am named for
my grandmother, Mary Virginia, but they don't call me all of it." She
paused to watch two white-plumed masons on their way to the commandery
on the next block.

"Well?" said the Candy Man.

She laughed. "Oh, I forgot. Why, it is Margaret Elizabeth. The doctor
came in; she's a lady doctor, you know, and said, 'Margaret Elizabeth,
there'll be muffins for tea.' And she said, 'All right. Dr. Prue.' And
Dr. Prue said, 'And cherry preserves, if you and Uncle Bob want them,'
and Margaret Elizabeth said, 'Goody!' And I must go now," Virginia
finished. "There's Betty looking for me."

Virginia might go and welcome. He had enough to occupy his thought for
the present. Margaret Elizabeth! Such a name would never have suggested
itself to him, yet it suited her. Beneath her young gaiety and charm
there was something the name fitted. Margaret Elizabeth! He loved it
already.

Why had he not guessed that the Little Red Chimney belonged to her?
Had not the sight of it stirred his heart? And why should that have been
so, except for some subtle fairy godmother suggestion? The picture of
Margaret Elizabeth and Uncle Bob eating cherry preserves was a pleasant
one. It brought her nearer. The Candy Man was inclined to like Uncle
Bob, to think of him as a broad-minded person whose prejudices against
Candy Men, granting he had them, might in time be overcome.

From being a bit low in his mind, the Candy Man's mood became positively
jovial. When the sad grey man known to the children as the Miser, and
invested with mysterious and awful powers, stopped to buy some hoarhound
drops, he wished him a cheery good afternoon.

The Miser was evidently surprised, but responded courteously, and
recalling the accident of two weeks ago, asked if the Candy Man had
heard anything of the injured chauffeur.

It chanced that he had heard the Reporter say, only yesterday, that the
man was doing well and likely to recover.

"And the young lady? I think I saw her the other day going into a house
across the street from my own."

"The house with the Little Red Chimney?" asked the Candy Man
indiscreetly, forgetting himself for the moment.

A smile slowly dawned on the face of the sad man, but quickly faded, as
a flock of naughty pigeons tore by, screaming, "Lizer, Lizer, look out
for the Miser!" If he had been about to make a comment, he thought
better of it, and turned away.

Having identified the Little Red Chimney as the property of the Girl
of All Others, the Candy Man now made a new discovery. He had a room
in one of the old residences of the neighbourhood, so many of which in
these days were being given over to boarding and lodging. Its windows
overlooked a back yard, in which grew a great ash, and he had been
interested to observe how long after other trees were bare this one kept
its foliage. He found it one morning, however, giving up its leaves by
the wholesale, under the touch of a sharp frost; and, wonder of wonders!
through its bared branches that magical chimney came into view, with a
corner of grey roof.

Not far away rose the big smoke stack belonging to the apartment houses,
impressive in its loftiness, but to his fancy the Little Red Chimney
held its own with dignity, standing for something unattainable by great
smoke stacks, however important.

The Candy Man, it will be seen, did not attempt to reconcile conflicting
evidence. He took what suited him and ignored the rest. Was Miss Bentley
the niece of Mrs. Gerrard Pennington? She was also the niece of Uncle
Bob. Did she ride in haughty limousines? She also rode in street cars.
Was she wined and dined by the rich? She also ate muffins and cherry
preserves, and brushed up the hearth of the Little Red Chimney.




CHAPTER FIVE

_In which the double life led by the heroine is explained, and
Augustus McAllister proves an alibi._


"Yes," said Miss Bentley, "I liked him. He turned out to be altogether
different from my first impressions. That afternoon at the Country
Club he seemed rather stiff--nice, assured manners, of course, but
unresponsive. But then the way in which we bounced in upon each other
was enough to break any amount of ice." She laughed at the recollection,
clasping her hands behind her head.

Instead of the little grey hat jammed down anyhow, she wore this morning
the most bewitching and frivolous of boudoir caps upon her bright head,
and a shimmery, lacy empire something, that clung caressingly about her,
and fell back becomingly from her round white arms. Miles and miles away
from the Candy Wagon was Margaret Elizabeth, who had so recently
hobnobbed down the avenue with Uncle Bob.

Mrs. Gerrard Pennington, in a similar garb, leaned an elbow on her desk,
a dainty French trifle, and gazed, perhaps a bit wistfully, at Margaret
Elizabeth's endearing young charms. "I am delighted that you like
Augustus. He is a young man of sterling qualities. His mother and I were
warm friends; I take a deep interest in him. Of course he is not showy;
perhaps he might be called a little slow; but he is substantial, and
while I should be the last to place an undue emphasis upon wealth, one
need not overlook its advantages. Augustus has had unusual
opportunities."

"Is Mr. McAllister rich?" Margaret Elizabeth dropped her arms in a
surprise which in its turn stirred a like emotion in her aunt's breast,
for Miss Bentley put rather a peculiar emphasis, it would seem, upon the
word rich. "I should never have guessed it," she added.

If Mrs. Pennington had been perfectly honest with herself, she would
have perceived that her own surprise indicated a suspicion that minus
his wealth the aforesaid sterling qualities were something of a dead
weight, but not for worlds would she have owned this. It would be a
great thing for Margaret Elizabeth, if she liked him. If she could be
the means of establishing dear old Richard's child in a position such
as the future Mrs. Augustus would occupy, she would feel she had done
her full duty. Mrs. Pennington was strong in the matter of duty.

"I should never have guessed it," Margaret Elizabeth repeated, after a
minute spent in a quick review of that talk in the summer house.

"It is not always possible, surely, to gauge a person's bank account in
the course of one conversation," her aunt suggested.

"I don't mean that; but don't you think, Aunt Eleanor, you can usually
tell very rich people? They are apt to be limited, in a way. Not always,
of course, but often. I can't explain it exactly. Perhaps it is
over-refined."

"If to be refined is to be limited, I prefer to be limited," Mrs.
Pennington remarked.

It was plain that unless Margaret Elizabeth went to the length of
retailing the whole of that Sunday morning conversation, which was out
of the question, she could not hope to make her meaning clear.

"What surprises me," her aunt went on, "is that you should have met
Augustus in a public park. It is very unlike him. I wonder what he
thought of you?"

This brought out Miss Bentley's dimples, as she owned he had seemed not
displeased to meet her. "I explained that I was waiting for Dr. Prue,
who had gone in to see one of the superintendent's children." She
further assured her aunt that River Bend Park was a delightful place in
which to enjoy nature, on Sunday morning or any other time.

"I confess I do not choose a public park when I wish to enjoy
nature--except for driving, of course. Perhaps," added Mrs. Pennington,
"that is what you call over-refined."

Margaret Elizabeth considered this thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is," she
said. "Not being able to enjoy things that are free to everybody."

But Margaret Elizabeth in that frivolously-becoming cap was an antidote
to her own remarks. Mrs. Pennington smiled indulgently. Richard's
daughter came honestly by some eccentricities, not to mention those
Vandegrifts, whose influence she greatly deplored.

"You will outgrow these socialistic ideas, my dear," she said. "But
I am still puzzled, the more I think of it, at your meeting Augustus on
Sunday morning. Was it two weeks ago? I am under the impression he left
for New York that very day."

"He didn't mention it, but there are afternoon trains," answered
Margaret Elizabeth. "He merely said something about a sick boy he was
going to see at St. Mary's."

This again was very unlike Augustus, but Mrs. Pennington said no more.
Meanwhile the faintest shadow of a doubt was dawning in her niece's
mind; so shadowy she was scarcely aware of it, until, glowing from her
walk across the park, she entered the drawing-room that afternoon.

There is, by the way, a difference between walking in Sunset Park, the
abode of the elect, with a huge St. Bernard in leash, and taking the
same exercise at River Bend, unchaperoned save by a chance guard. Any
right-minded person must see this.

A young man, who sat talking to Mrs. Gerrard Pennington before the fire,
rose at her entrance.

"I am glad you have come, Margaret Elizabeth," her aunt exclaimed.
"I think you know Mr. McAllister? But we have rather a good joke on
you, for August says he was never in his life in River Bend Park."

"How do you do, Miss Bentley. Awfully glad to see you. That is, except
to motor through, don't you know, Mrs. Pennington."

Miss Bentley's brown eyes met Mr. McAllister's blue ones, and in the
period of one brief glance she experienced almost as many sensations,
and reviewed as much past history, as the proverbial drowning man.
The casual resemblance was striking. But the eyes--these were not the
friendly, merry eyes to which she had confided the fairy godmother
nonsense. Fancy so much as mentioning fairy godmothers in the presence
of these steely orbs.

Margaret Elizabeth was game, however.

"I was mistaken, of course," she owned lightly, as she shook hands.
"I have met so many people, and am stupid at connecting names and faces.
I recall Mr. McAllister perfectly." And straightway she plunged into
New York and what was going on there. Had he seen "Grumpy" and wasn't it
dear? And so on, and so on. Margaret Elizabeth could talk, and more than
this she could look bewitching, and did, when she slipped out of her
long coat, and with many graceful upward motions, removed her hat and
fluffed her hair.

She would make tea, she loved to, in fact she seemed bent upon luring
Augustus away from the fire and Mrs. Pennington. This young gentleman,
whose mental processes were not rapid, and who habitually overworked any
idea that found lodgment in his mind, was disposed to dwell upon River
Bend Park and Miss Bentley's strange mistake in thinking she had seen
him there, when actually, don't you know, he was on his way to New York.
It was just as well not to have the situation complicated by the
presence of her more alert relative, whose amused glances kept the glow
on Margaret Elizabeth's cheek at a most becoming pitch. Perhaps, too,
the subconscious thinking concerning that same queer mistake, which went
on while she chatted so gaily, so skilfully leading the way to safer
ground, had something to do with it.

Augustus, unaware that he was led, was as clay in her hands. He warmed
to her expressions of pleasure in the proposed dinner dance, which were
indeed entirely genuine. A dance was a dance, and Miss Bentley was
young. As she poured tea her curling lashes rested now on her cheek,
were now lifted in smiling glances at the complacent Augustus, much as
when on a certain Sunday morning, while softly laying bloom against
bloom, her eyes had now and again met the eyes of the Candy Man. There
were other callers, other tea drinkers, but to none did Mr. McAllister
surrender his place of vantage.

"If she keeps on like this, Augustus is hers--if she wants him,"
Mr. Gerrard Pennington remarked to his wife later in the evening.

"If I could have her all to myself," Mrs. Pennington sighed; "but any
impression I may make is neutralised by her association with those
Vandegrifts. It is an absurd arrangement, spending half her time down
there."

"I think you are rather in the lead, aren't you, my dear?"

Mrs. Pennington shrugged her shoulders, but there was some triumph in
her smile. "She is a dear child, in spite of some absurd notions, and
I long to see her well and safely settled. I don't quite know in what
her charm most lies, but she has it."

"Oh, it's her youth, and the conviction that it is all so jolly well
worth while. She is so keen about everything." There was an odd twinkle
in Mr. Pennington's eyes, usually so piercing beneath their bushy grey
brows. Margaret Elizabeth called him Uncle Gerry. It was amusing. He
liked it, and enjoyed playing the part of Uncle Gerry. "Of course she's
bound to get over that. Still, I shouldn't be in any haste to settle
her."

His wife thought of her brother, the Professor of Archæology, now in
the Far East. "It is queer, but Dick never has," she said, answering
the first part of his sentence. But when she spoke again, it was to
say energetically: "The Towers needs a mistress, and August is
irreproachable. Really, I am devoted to the boy."

Mr. Pennington found this amusing.

"If only it were a colonial house. It is handsome, but I prefer simpler
lines," Mrs. Pennington continued meditatively.

The Towers was a combination of feudal castle and Swiss châlet erected
thirty years before by the parents of Augustus, and occupying a
commanding position on Sunset Ridge. The irreverent sometimes referred
to it as the Salt Shakers.

Margaret Elizabeth meanwhile, in the solitude of her own room, was
asking herself questions, for which she found no answers.

"Who--oh, who was this person with the nice friendly eyes that led one
on to talk about fairy godmothers?"

She considered it in profound seriousness for a time, then suddenly
broke into unrestrained laughter.




CHAPTER SIX

_In which Margaret Elizabeth is discussed at the Breakfast Table; in
which also, later on, she and Virginia and Uncle Bob talk before the
fire, and in which finally Margaret Elizabeth seeks consolation by
relating to Uncle Bob her adventure in the park._


"No, she is not regularly beautiful," remarked Dr. Prue in her
diagnostician manner as she poured her father's second cup of coffee,
"but there is much that is captivating about her. Her hair grows
prettily on her forehead, the firmness of her chin, the line of her lips
in repose----"

"Mercy on us! You talk like a novel," interrupted Uncle Bob, who was
longing to get in an oar. "Now I like her best when she laughs."

"But I was speaking of her face in repose."

"And any way," persisted Uncle Bob, "if she isn't a beauty, I don't know
what you call it. She has the witchingest ways!"

"We were speaking of features, not ways. If you dissect her----"

"Good Heavens, Prue! Find another word."

"If you dissect her," the doctor repeated firmly, "you will find nothing
remarkable in her separate features."

"But I insist," Uncle Bob spoke in a loud tone, and brought his fist
down so emphatically his coffee spilled over into the saucer, "that
beauty is a complex thing consisting of ways as well as features."
The sentence was concluded in a milder tone, owing to the coffee.

"Nancy, give Mr. Vandegrift another saucer," said Dr. Prue.

"My dear, there is no need. I can pour this back," he protested. Then, a
fresh saucer having been substituted, he went on: "Take a landscape----"

"I haven't time for landscapes this morning, father. I am due at the
hospital at nine. You'll have to excuse me."

"Well, what I was going to say is, that it is the combination of all
her separate qualities and characteristics, manifested in ways and
otherwise, that is beautiful--that constitutes beauty. The something
that makes her Margaret Elizabeth, that subtle--" Uncle Bob was talking
against time.

"Now, father," Dr. Prue pushed back her chair and rose, "there is
nothing subtle about Margaret Elizabeth, and you know it. She is a
thoroughly nice, quite pretty girl, and that is all there is to it. If
those Penningtons don't spoil her." With this the doctor disappeared.

"Miss Prue and her pa do argufy to beat the band," Nancy remarked to
Jenny the cook as she waited for hot cakes.

"That's all, Nancy. I shan't want any more," her master told her when
she carried them into the dining-room. "You needn't wait." As the door
closed behind her he smiled to himself. He always enjoyed the leisurely
comfort of those last cakes.

The morning sun shone in brightly, emphasising the pleasant, substantial
appointments of the room and the breakfast table. Its glint in the old
silver coffee pot was a joy to him; the unopened paper at his elbow
spoke to him of the interests of a day, like it, not yet unfolded. Uncle
Bob after his own fashion savoured life....

[Illustration: DR. PRUE]

The sun had travelled around the house and was looking in at the west
window of the Little Red Chimney Room, when Virginia discovered her
ladyship sitting on a low stool by her hearthstone deep in meditation.
"I saw the smoke," she announced, "so I thought I'd come over."

"I am glad to see you," Margaret Elizabeth said, waking up. "But what
smoke do you mean?" And now it developed that although Miss Bentley was
of course aware of the Little Red Chimney, and indeed preferred it red,
she had not understood its significance.

In amused interest she listened while Virginia explained. "That dear,
ridiculous Uncle Bob!" she cried, hugging her knees. "And what fun,
Virginia!"

Virginia nodded. "Like a fairy-tale," she said.

"So it is," Miss Bentley agreed, and became again lost in thought.

From the other side of the hearth Virginia watched her. Her ladyship
to-day wore a grey-blue gown with a broad white collar, and she
contrasted harmoniously with the soft browns and greens of her
surroundings. Uncle Bob should have been there to enjoy the glint of
the sunshine in her hair.

It was an unobtrusive room, abounding in pleasant suggestions if you sat
still and let them sink in: books around the walls, a few water colours
and bits of porcelain, an open piano, a work table, a broad divan with
many cushions, ferns in the windows, and the fire.

Virginia, however, saw nothing of this; she was looking at Margaret
Elizabeth. "The Candy Man wanted to know where you stayed when you
weren't here," she remarked at length.

Miss Bentley came out of her brown study in great surprise. Who in the
world was the Candy Man?

"Why, you know the Candy Wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner! And don't you
remember how you fell in the mud, and the Candy Man helped you up, and
I gave you your bag, and the Miser was there too?" Virginia spoke in
patient toleration of Miss Bentley's strange lapse of memory.

"Naturally I was rather shaken and didn't notice. Was it a Candy Man who
picked me up? And a miser, you say?" Chin in hand Margaret Elizabeth
regarded her visitor. "It is all very interesting, but why should the
Candy Man wish to know about me?"

Virginia owned that she had mentioned the Little Red Chimney to him,
and that when the identity of her ladyship had come to light, he had
exclaimed, "I might have guessed!"

"Well, really," said Miss Bentley, sitting up very straight, "what
business is it of his to be guessing about me?"

"He isn't Irish like Tim," Virginia hastened to assure her. "He's very
nice. He's a friend of mine."

Margaret Elizabeth laughed. "That makes it all right, I suppose; and if
he picked me up--But who is the Miser?"

"He lives over there," Virginia pointed toward the front window, "in
that stone house with the vine on it. Aleck says he has rooms and rooms
full of money."

The house she indicated was almost black with time and soot, but its
fine proportions suggested spacious, high-ceiled rooms, and whatever its
present condition, a past of dignity and importance.

"How extremely interesting! What a remarkable neighbourhood this seems
to be!"

"Is it like a fairy-tale where you stay when you aren't here?" Virginia
asked.

Sudden illumination came to Margaret Elizabeth. "That is just what it
isn't," she cried. "It's splendid and beautiful, and all sorts of
things, except a fairy-tale. I wonder why? I love fairy-tales and Little
Red Chimneys."

"So does the Candy Man," exclaimed Virginia, charmed at the coincidence.
"It must be fun to be a Candy Man," she continued. "It isn't much like
a fairy-tale where I live. I should like to live in a sure-enough house
with stairs."

"You talk like a squirrel who lives in a tree. And speaking of squirrels,
you and I must buy some nuts for our bunny sometime, from this Candy
Man. If he picked me up I suppose I ought to patronise him. All the
same, Virginia," and now Miss Bentley spoke with great seriousness,
"I wish you not to say anything about me to him. It is rather silly,
you know."

Virginia did not know, but she longed to do in every particular what
Miss Bentley desired, so she promised.

The opal lights in the western sky were the only reminders left of the
sunny day, when Uncle Bob, seated comfortably in the big armchair,
listened to Margaret Elizabeth's confession, the flames dancing and
curling around a fresh log meanwhile. In size it was but a modest log,
for the fireplace was neither wide nor deep like those at Pennington
Park, but the Little Red Chimney did its part so merrily and well that
upon no other hearth could the flames dance and curl so gaily. At least
so it had seemed to Margaret Elizabeth, sitting there chin in hand,
after Virginia's departure.

"And you are certain you never met him before?" Uncle Bob ran his
fingers through his hair and frowned thoughtfully.

"Perfectly certain. You see the resemblance was remarkable, all but
the eyes, and I thought Mr. McAllister had simply waked up. People
are sometimes stiff when you first meet them. He knew who I was, for
he called me Miss Bentley. Naturally I thought it was some one I had
met--particularly when he mentioned the accident. You see, in getting
out of the machine at the Country Club a day or two before I caught
my skirt in the door and fell, striking my elbow. It didn't amount to
anything, though it hurt for a minute, but Aunt Eleanor made a great
fuss. He may have been somewhere about at the time, but I didn't meet
him. And it makes me furious," Margaret Elizabeth continued, "when
I think of his not telling me."

"Telling you that you didn't know him?" asked Uncle Bob.

"Certainly, he should have said at the very beginning, 'Miss Bentley,
you are mistaken in thinking you know me.'"

"Ha! ha!" laughed Uncle Bob.

"Now what are you laughing at?" his niece demanded. "Honestly, don't you
think he should have?" But she laughed herself.

"Well, perhaps," he owned, reflecting, however, that if Margaret
Elizabeth looked half so alluring that morning as she did now in her
grey-blue frock, with her bright hair a bit tumbled, it was asking a
good deal of human nature.

"Now, of course, Uncle Bob, this is strictly confidential. I wouldn't
have Dr. Prue know for the world. It is bad enough to have Aunt Eleanor
smiling sarcastically, though she doesn't know half. I think I have at
length quieted her, and the great Augustus is entirely mollified." She
paused to laugh again, then continued tragically, "Sympathy is what I
need now. To begin with, it was the most perfect day--the sort to make
you forget tiresome conventions."

Uncle Bob nodded. "Perhaps he forgot, too," he suggested.

Margaret Elizabeth bit her lip. "That's true. I must try to be fair.
He had nice eyes, Uncle Bob--with a twinkle in them." A smile played
over her lips, her dimple came and went. She gazed absently at the
curling flame. Suddenly she rose from her ottoman, and seated herself
bolt upright on the sofa with one of the plumpest cushions behind her.
"All the same it was inexcusable in me," she declared sternly.

"What was?" asked her uncle.

"The nonsense I talked. About a Fairy Godmother Society! No doubt he was
laughing in his sleeve all the time."

"Oh, I guess not. It sounds quite original and interesting. Have you
copyrighted the idea?"

"Uncle Bob, you are a dear. Some time I'll tell you all about it--when
I get over feeling so terribly, if I ever do."

"Now, really," insisted Uncle Bob, "I don't see why you should worry.
You are almost certain to meet him again, and----"

"I shall die if I do," Margaret Elizabeth declared; but somehow the
assertion failed to ring true.

"From what you have said he is plainly a gentleman, and altogether
matters might be worse," Uncle Bob concluded.

Miss Bentley shook her head. "I don't see how they could be," she
insisted.




CHAPTER SEVEN

_Shows how the Candy Wagon is visited in behalf of the Squirrel, and
how pride suffers a fall; how Miss Bentley turns to Vedantic Philosophy
to drown her annoyance, and discovers how hard it is to forget when you
wish to._


"When I reflect upon the small weight attaching to true worth
unsupported by personal charm, I am tempted to turn cynic."

Dr. Prue closed her bag with a snap and lifted her arms to adjust a
hatpin.

"Youth and beauty take the trick, that's a fact." Uncle Bob laughed as
if he found it a delicious comedy.

They stood before the office window. At the gate the Apartment Pigeons
were fluttering around Margaret Elizabeth, while her ladyship gravely
admonished them for some piece of mischief.

"I believe she is taming the terrors," remarked the doctor.

"She had them all in the other afternoon," said Uncle Bob, "sitting
cross-legged on the floor like little Orientals, while she told them
stories. Margaret Elizabeth can manage them!" His tone thrilled with
pride.

"Yes, and Miss Kitty Molloy will drop anything she has on hand to work
for Miss Bentley; the market-man picks out his choicest fruit for her;
and so it goes, if you call it managing. Well, I must be off. Good-by."

As Dr. Prue went out, Margaret Elizabeth, having dismissed the pigeons
for the time being, came in, and sat down at her desk to finish a
letter.

She wrote: "Yes, Uncle Bob and Cousin Prue argue as much as ever, and
I suspect that more often than not I am the subject upon which they
disagree. I am in a state of disagreement about myself, father dear.
Society is absorbing beyond anything I dreamed of, and if I had not
promised you to stop and think for at least ten minutes out of the
fourteen hundred and forty, I fear I should have already become a real
Society Person."

At this point Uncle Bob looked in. "Well, how many parties on hand now?"
he asked.

Margaret Elizabeth laid down her pen and counted them off on her
fingers, beginning with a tea at five, theatre and supper afterward, and
so on, till the supply of fingers threatened to become exhausted.

"Go on, I'll lend you mine," said Uncle Bob. "Prue says," he added,
"that it is enough to kill you, but you look pretty strong."

"She wouldn't mind if I worked my fingers to the bone for her hospital
or the Suffrage Association, but I want a little fun first, Uncle Bob."
Margaret Elizabeth supported an adorable chin in a pink palm and
regarded her relative appealingly.

"That's what I tell Prue. It is natural you should like best to stay at
Pennington Park, and go about in a splendid machine. I don't blame you
in the least, and I don't wish you to feel bound to come down here when
you don't really care to. Much as I love to have you, I shall not be
hurt." Uncle Bob nodded at Margaret Elizabeth with a reassuring smile
that in spite of intentions was a bit wistful too.

"I don't believe you understand, and for that matter, neither do I. I
love you best, and the Little Red Chimney, and this darling room. There
aren't any fairies at Pennington Park, but--I do like the whirl, the
fun, the pretty things, and----"

"The admiration, Margaret Elizabeth; out with it. You'll feel better,"
said Uncle Bob.

"Well, yes, people _do_ like me, and oh, I must show you
something!" She sprang up, and from a box lying on the sofa she took a
filmy, rose-coloured fabric. "What do you think of this?" she demanded,
shaking out the shimmering folds before his surprised eyes.

He rose nobly to the occasion. "Why, it looks like a sunset cloud. Is it
to wear?"

"Certainly. It is a pattern robe. Miss Kitty across the street is going
to put it together for me. She is a genius. Sunset cloud is very poetic.
Thank you, Uncle Bob. And now I must finish my letter before I go over
to Miss Kitty's, and then I promised the children I'd go with them to
buy some nuts for the squirrel. A bunny who has the courage to live so
far downtown should be rewarded. I wish you had been here, Uncle Bob, to
join our society." Margaret Elizabeth sat down with the rosy cloud all
about her, and laughed at the recollection. "Never again will they throw
a stone at his bunnyship. We laid our hands together so, and swore by
the paw of the cinnamon bear and the ear of the tailless cat, to take
the part of our brother beasts and birds. It was all on the spur of the
moment, or I might have done better, but they were impressed."

[Illustration: UNCLE BOB]

"I should think so, indeed," remarked her uncle. "You are a sort of
philanthropist after all."

"Yes, I have a very marked bump. That reminds me, if I don't see Dr.
Prue, you tell her, please, that I am going to take Augustus McAllister
to the Suffrage meeting."

Having returned her robe to its box, Miss Bentley sat down at her desk
and wrote furiously for five minutes, then folded her letter, put it
in the envelope, and addressed, stamped, and sealed it, concluding the
business with a resolute fist. Shortly after, in the familiar grey suit,
with the little grey hat jammed down anyhow on her bright hair, she went
forth, the box containing the sunset cloud under her arm.

Homage and admiration attended upon her within Miss Kitty's humble
establishment, and waited outside in the persons of the adoring pigeons.
Virginia, having been unable to keep the story of the Little Red Chimney
to herself, must now in consequence share her ladyship with the flock.
But certain privileges were hers--to walk next to Miss Bentley and clasp
her disengaged hand; to carry her bag or book; to act as her prime
minister in keeping order.

Thus Miss Bentley went her triumphant way that afternoon, all
unconscious that there was any triumph about it. Not that she was wholly
unaware of her own charm. As she confessed to Uncle Bob, she knew people
liked her, and the knowledge was pleasing. She was now on her way to be
gracious to the Candy Man, and in this connection she had rehearsed a
neat little scene in which she stood by and allowed the children to make
their purchases, and then at the right moment asked easily if there had
been any more accidents on the corner of late, adding something about
his kindness in helping her up, and so on. The Candy Man would of course
touch his cap, for from Virginia's account he was rather a nice Candy
Man, and reply, "Not at all, Miss," or "That's all right"; then she
would smile upon him and the incident would be closed.

The first half of the scene went off perfectly. The Candy Man was
selling taffy to a nurse-maid when they approached, and if he saw who
was coming, and if his heart was in his mouth, and if he felt a wild
longing to escape from the Candy Wagon, he gave no sign. To Margaret
Elizabeth, as they waited, he was a Candy Man in white jacket and cap,
and nothing more.

The pigeons fluttered joyously. Miss Bentley uttered an impersonal good
afternoon, Virginia advanced, a silver quarter in her palm, and demanded
chestnuts for the squirrel. The bag was filled and held out to her, and
as she handed over the quarter in exchange she explained, gratuitously,
"We'll perhaps eat _some_ of them ourselves."

At this the Candy Man looked up with a smile in his eyes, and met the
glance of Miss Bentley, who immediately forgot all she had intended to
say, for these were the eyes that were not the eyes of Augustus. There
was no excuse for arguing the question. She knew it.

The point was, after all, Margaret Elizabeth concluded in the solitude
of her own hearth-stone, not whether she had been equal to the occasion
to-day--and she hadn't--but that he on a former occasion had been guilty
of base behaviour. If this were a real Candy Man, one might excuse him,
but he plainly was not. There was a mystery, and she loathed mysteries.
She was annoyed to the point of exasperation. She would dismiss him from
her mind now and forever.

Uncle Bob, reading the evening paper in the dining-room while Nancy set
the table, admitting as she passed back and forth an occasional savoury
odor from the kitchen region, became aware of sounds in the hall which
betokened some one descending the stairs in haste. The next moment
Margaret Elizabeth stood in the doorway.

"Uncle Bob," she said, as she drew a long white glove over her elbow,
her face shadowed by her plumy hat, "you remember you said it might be
worse, and I insisted it couldn't be? You were right, it is infinitely
worse."

With this she was gone, and a premonitory buzz of great dignity and
reserve from the street presently indicated that she was being borne
away in the Pennington car.

And now it was that Miss Bentley discovered how impossible it is to
forget when you wish to. You may assist a treacherous memory with a
memorandum, but no corresponding resource offers when you wish to
forget. You may succeed in diverting your thoughts for a time, but
sooner or later, ten to one, in the most illogical manner, the very
thing you seek to avoid forces itself upon your attention. What could
have seemed further away from the Candy Man than ancient Hindoo
Philosophy? And into this she plunged to drown her annoyance, and
incidentally help a fellow member of the Tuesday Club. Margaret
Elizabeth was ever ready to fill in a breach, and when Miss Allen came
to her in despair, having been positively forbidden to use her eyes,
she obligingly agreed to help her.

The subject grew, as all subjects have a way of doing. It was a
providential ordering, Uncle Bob remarked, enabling the writers of
papers to take refuge from criticism in the impressive statement that
it is impossible to treat of the matter adequately in so short a space.
Margaret Elizabeth laughed, and crossed out a paragraph at the bottom of
her first page, and then set out for the Public Library.

Seated in the Reference Room, with more books than she could read in a
year on the table before her, behold Miss Bentley presently inconsolable
for lack of a certain authority she chanced to remember in the college
library at home. The whole force of the Reference Room mourned with her,
for Margaret Elizabeth in the part of earnest student was no less
captivating than in her other roles.

"I know where there is a copy," said the youngest and wisest of the
force, "but it won't do you any good. Mr. Knight, the man the children
call the Miser, has one."

"I'll go and ask him to let me see it. I'd like to know a real live
miser." Margaret Elizabeth closed the book she had in hand and rose.

The force gasped at her temerity. They had heard he was a horrid old
man; but the youngest observed wisely that probably he wouldn't bite.

Miss Bentley, however, having recently developed a bump of discretion,
did first consult Dr. Prue in the matter, who responded, "Why certainly,
I see no objection to your asking to see the book. Mr. Knight is a
harmless, studious man. I have met him on two occasions when I was
called in to attend his housekeeper, Mrs. Sampson, and he was courtesy
itself. I will go with you and introduce you, if you like."

Virginia, hanging around and overhearing, begged to be allowed to go
too. "I'd love to see the inside of his house," she urged.

She was assured she would find it stupid, but this was as nothing
compared with the glory of entering the abode of the Miser in company
with her ladyship, and the other pigeons looking enviously on outside.

Dr. Prue, of course, had no time to waste, so Margaret Elizabeth
hastened to find her pad and pencil, and across the street they went
forthwith. The Miser was discovered in his library, a spacious, shabby
room, yet not too shabby for dignity, full of valuable and even rare
things, such as old prints and engravings, and most of all of books,
which overflowed their shelves in a scholarly disorder not unfamiliar
to Margaret Elizabeth.

With businesslike brevity Dr. Vandegrift presented her cousin and her
credentials to Mr. Knight, who, with a quaint and formal courtesy, was
happy to oblige the daughter of an author so distinguished in his chosen
field.

Miss Bentley in her turn presented, with suitable gravity, Miss Virginia
Brooks, who promised to be quiet as a mouse, and whose eyes betrayed her
disappointment on discovering the inside of the Miser's house to be so
much like any other.

After the necessary stir attending upon the finding of the desired
volume, and getting settled to work, profound quiet again rested upon
the library. Margaret Elizabeth wrote busily, her book propped upon a
small stand before her, while across the room Virginia softly turned the
leaves of a huge volume of engravings, pausing now and then to rest her
cheek in her palm and regard the Miser steadily for a moment.

The master of the library had the air of having forgotten their presence
altogether. Aided by a microscope, with a grave absorbed face, he
studied and compared a series of prints spread before him. So quiet was
it all, that the crackle and purr of the coal fire in the old-fashioned
grate made itself quite audible, and the leisurely tick of the clock in
the hall marked time solemnly.

Margaret Elizabeth's interest in Vedantic Philosophy began after a time
to wane, and she allowed her attention to wander about the room, from
object to object, until it concentrated upon the student himself. Was
he really a miser? she wondered. He did not look it. His was rather the
face of an ascetic. Suddenly it flashed into her mind that here was the
sad, grey man of that unforgettable conversation in the park.

Virginia slipped down and came to her side. "Is there really a room full
of gold?" she whispered.

Margaret Elizabeth shook her head sternly. It was time they were going.
Her hand was tired. She would ask permission to come again. As she
returned her book to the shelf, she displaced a smaller one, a shabby
leather-bound book, at which she scarcely glanced, but upon which
Virginia seized.

"The Candy Man has one like this," she said. "Such a funny name! See?
Only his is Vol. one and this is Vol. two."

Miss Bentley cared not at all what strange books the Candy Man owned,
and said so, frowning so severely you could scarcely have believed her
to be the same person who only a few minutes later was thanking the
Miser with such alluring grace of manner.

She was welcome to come when she chose, she was assured, with grave
politeness. His library was at her disposal.

"You have many beautiful things," said Margaret Elizabeth. "This
portrait above the mantel, for instance, seems to me very interesting."

The portrait in question was rather a splendid one of a military-looking
man probably in his thirties. One of the best examples of Jouett's work
it was generally considered, Mr. Knight explained, and said to have been
an admirable likeness of his uncle, General Waite, at the time it was
painted.

It was inexplicable that as Margaret Elizabeth gazed up at the general
the eyes beneath the stern brows should become the eyes of the Candy
Man. But her exasperation at this absurd illusion passed quickly into
horrified embarrassment, when Virginia, edging toward the master of the
house, asked explosively, "Say, have you really got a room full of
gold?"

"There is one thing certain, you can never go there with me again," said
Miss Bentley, on their way across the street.

"But Aleck said----" began the culprit.

"Never mind what he said. Aleck is a very ignorant little boy. People
don't keep gold in rooms. If they have it they put it in the bank or
send it to the mint."




CHAPTER EIGHT

_In which the Miser's past history is touched upon; which shows how
his solitude is again invaded, and how he makes a new friend._


"There isn't any mystery about _him_, so far as I know," said the
Reporter, who was seated as usual upon the carriage block. The Candy
Wagon continued to act as a magnet for him, and in season and out his
genial presence confronted the Candy Man.

If his emphasis upon the pronoun was noticed, it was ignored. The
mystery was, the Candy Man replied, how with such a face he could be a
miser.

"Oh, he's a bit nutty, of course. My grandmother says his money came to
him unexpectedly and the shock was too much for him. They say he has a
notion he is holding it in trust. He is rational enough in every other
way, a shrewd investor, in fact. His uncle, General Waite, who left him
the money, was a connection of my grandmother's."

"The Miser is a cousin then?"

"Not on your tintype, my friend. Old Knight was a nephew of the
general's wife, you see."

"And there were no other heirs?" asked the Candy Man.

"There was an own nephew, I have heard, who mysteriously disappeared
shortly before the general's death. I have heard my grandmother mention
it, but it was long before my day. Why are you interested?"

Even to himself the Candy Man could not quite explain his interest in
this sad and lonely man, except that, as he had told Miss Bentley in
their first and only conversation, he had a habit of getting interested
in people. For example, in the house where he roomed there was a young
couple who just now engaged his sympathies. The husband, a teacher in
the Boys' High School, had been ill with typhoid, and the little wife's
anxious face haunted the Candy Man. The husband was recovering, but of
course the long illness had overtaxed their small resources, and--But,
oh dear! weren't there hundreds of such cases? What was the good of
thinking about it! Yet suppose there were a Fairy Godmother Society?

The Candy Man was a foolish dreamer, and his favourite dream in these
days was of some time sitting beside the Little Red Chimney hearth, and
discussing the Fairy Godmother Society with Miss Bentley. These bright
dreams, however, were interspersed by moments of extreme depression, in
which he cursed the day upon which he had become a Candy Man; moments
when the horrified surprise in the eyes of Miss Bentley as she
recognised him, rose up to torment him.

It was in one of these that the Reporter had presented himself this
time, and when he was gone the Candy Man returned to his gloom. Having
nothing else to do just then he opened the shabby book with the funny
name, and looked at the crimson flower. Through the stain of the flower
he read:

    _"If a person is fearful and abject, what else is necessary but
    to apply for permission to bury him as if he were dead."_


The book had come into his possession by a curious chance not long
before, and he treasured it, not so much for its sturdy philosophy, as
because it was in some sort a link to the shadowy past of his early
childhood.

The adjectives "fearful" and "abject" brought him up short. What manner
of man was he to be so quickly overwhelmed by difficulties? As for being
a Candy Man, did he not owe to this despised position his good fortune
in meeting Miss Bentley at all?

Somewhere about eight o'clock the next evening, being Sunday, he might
have been seen strolling by the house of the Little Red Chimney. That
particular architectural feature had lost its identity in the shades of
evening, but he was indulging the characteristic desire of a lover to
gaze at his lady's window under the kindly cover of the night.

The blind was drawn within a few inches of the sill, but these inches
allowed him a glimpse of a blazing fire, and while he lingered a shadow
flitted across the curtain in its direction, and then another, until in
his mind's eye he beheld Margaret Elizabeth and Uncle Bob seated beside
the hearth. For aught he knew, it might be Augustus McAllister making
an evening call, but the Candy Man was just then too determinedly
optimistic to harbour such an idea.

[Illustration: THE MISER]

As he passed on he was occupied in trying to picture to himself her
ladyship sitting before her fire, but that familiar little grey hat,
which was so entirely inappropriate, would persist, in spite of all he
could do, in getting into the picture. Only once, when curling plumes
took its place, had he seen her without it, and though for an instant he
would succeed in removing it, presto! before he knew it, there it was
again, jammed down anyhow on her bright hair.

With odds in favour of the hat, the struggle came to a sudden pause at
sight of a tall figure leaning heavily and in evident pain against one
of the ornamental iron fences which prevailed along this street. At once
proffering his assistance, he recognised Mr. Knight, the Miser.

It was plain the sufferer would have preferred to decline help. It would
soon pass. It was nothing. He had had such attacks before. He spoke
brokenly, adding, "I thank you," in a tone of dismissal.

The Candy Man showed himself to be, when occasion demanded, a masterful
person. Without arguing the point, he supported the Miser with a firm
arm and began to urge him in the direction of his home. Mr. Knight, half
fainting as he was, submitted without a word until his door was reached;
then, there being no response to his companion's vigorous ring, he
murmured something about the servants having gone, and began to fumble
in his pocket.

The Candy Man, taking the latch key from his trembling fingers, opened
the door, and ignoring the evident expectation conveyed in his renewed
thanks, continued to assert authority, supporting the invalid into his
library. "I shall not leave you alone until you are relieved," he said.

Again Mr. Knight submitted to his captor's will, and lying back in his
arm-chair directed him to the restorative that was prescribed for these
seizures. When it had been administered he lay quiet with closed eyes.

The Candy Man now turned his attention to the fire, which had burned
low, coaxing it skilfully out of its sullen apathy. He was brushing up
tidily, when Mr. Knight, to whose face the colour was returning, spoke.

"You are very kind," he said, adding as the Candy Man felt his pulse and
nodded his satisfaction, "are you a physician?"

"No," was the smiling answer. "Merely something of a nurse. My father
was an invalid for some years."

The sick man said "Ah!" his eyes resting, perhaps a little wistfully,
upon the vigorous young fellow before him. "Don't let me keep you," he
added. "I am quite relieved, and my housekeeper will return very shortly
from church."

Instead of leaving him the Candy Man sat down. "I have nothing to do
this evening, Mr. Knight, and unless you turn me out forcibly I mean to
stay with you till some member of your household comes in."

"I fear my strength is hardly equal to turning you out," the Miser
replied with a smile. "You are most kind." Then after a pause he added
apologetically: "Will you kindly tell me your name? Your face is
familiar, but my memory is at fault."

"My name is Reynolds, Robert Reynolds, and I am at present conducting a
candy wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner. That is where you have seen me." He
had no mind to sail under false colours again.

The sick man's "Indeed!" was spoken with careful courtesy, but his
surprise was plain enough.

The Candy Man leaned forward, an arm on his crossed knee; his eyes met
those of the older man frankly. "It is not my chosen profession," he
said. "I happened to be free to follow any chance impulse, and the
opportunity offered to help in this way a friend in need. It may have
been foolish. I am alone in the world, and entirely unacquainted here.
I should not care for the permanent job, but there's more in it than
you would suppose. More enjoyment, I mean."

"I recall now you mentioned the Little Red Chimney," said Mr. Knight.

The Candy Man grew red. Why had he been so imprudent? The Miser's memory
certainly might be worse.

"And now I know why your face is so familiar," the invalid went on.
"I sat opposite to you in the car going to the park one Sunday morning.
My physician prescribes fresh air. And later I saw you with that
bright-faced young girl, Miss Bentley. You were talking together in the
pavilion near the river. You both seemed exceedingly merry. I envied
you. I seemed to realise how old and lonely I am. I think I envied you
her friendship."

"Your impression is natural," answered the Candy Man, "but the truth is
I do not know Miss Bentley. We met unexpectedly in the pavilion that
morning. I did not at the time realise it, I was unpardonably dense,
but she took me for some one else. On the occasion of the accident that
foggy evening--you perhaps remember it--I overheard the name she gave to
the conductor. Well, it seems she had no idea she was talking to a Candy
Man that morning in the park, and I should have known it."

The Miser leaned his head on a thin hand, and certainly there was
nothing sordid, nothing mean, in the eyes which looked so kindly at his
companion. It was not perhaps a strong face, nor yet quite a weak one;
rather it indicated an over-sensitive, brooding nature. "You will not
always be a Candy Man," he said. "I have made Miss Bentley's
acquaintance recently. She is friendliness itself."

At this moment a grey slip of a woman, with a prayer-book in her hand,
entered, and was presented as Mrs. Sampson, the housekeeper. The Candy
Man rose to go, but Mr. Knight seemed now in no haste to release him.

"I should be glad to see you again, if some evening you have nothing
better to do," he said. "You may perhaps be interested in some of my
treasures." He glanced about the room. "You say you too are alone in
the world?"

"Quite," the Candy Man answered. "Everyone I know has some relative, or
at least an hereditary friend, but owing to the peculiar circumstances
of my life, I have none. I do not mean I am friendless, you understand.
I have some school and college friends, good ones. It is in background
I am particularly lacking," he concluded.

"I have allowed my friends to slip away from me," confessed the Miser.
"It was the force of circumstances in my case, too, though I brought it
upon myself. I have been justly misunderstood."

"'Justly misunderstood.'" The Candy Man repeated the words to himself as
he walked home in the frosty night. They were strange words, but he did
not believe them irrational.




CHAPTER NINE

_Shows how Miss Bentley and the Reporter take refuge in a cave, and
how in the course of the conversation which follows, she hears something
which disposes her to feel more kindly toward the Candy Man; shows also
how Uncle Bob proves faithless to his trust, and his niece finds herself
locked out in consequence._


"Let's pretend we are pursued by wild Indians and take refuge in this
cave."

The scene was one of those afternoon crushes which everybody attends and
few enjoy. Miss Bentley, struggling with an ice, which the state of the
atmosphere rendered eminently desirable, and the density of the crowd
made indulgence in precarious, addressed her next neighbour, whom she
had catalogued as a nice, friendly boy. "It's Mr. Brown, isn't it?" she
added in triumph at so easily associating the name with the face.

The young man's beaming countenance showed his delight. "Good for you,
Miss Bentley! It would be great. Let me have your plate while you
squeeze in."

This corner behind a mass of greens seemed to have been left with the
intention of protecting an elaborate cabinet that occupied a shallow
recess. However it might be, here was a refuge, difficult of access,
but possible. Margaret Elizabeth held on to her hat and dived in.

"Grand!" she cried. "This is beyond my wildest hopes," and she perched
herself on a short step-ladder, left here no doubt by the decorators,
and held out her hands for the plates. Mr. Brown found a more lowly seat
beneath a bay tree. They looked at each other and laughed.

"My position is a ticklish one, so to speak," he observed, vainly trying
to dodge the palm leaves to the right of him; "but I think we are
reasonably safe from pursuit."

"I haven't the remotest idea where my aunt is," Margaret Elizabeth
remarked, eating her ice in serene unconcern.

"Say, Miss Bentley, I have heard my cousin speak of you--Augustus
McAllister, you know."

"Are you Mr. McAllister's cousin?" Miss Bentley's tone and smile left
it to be inferred that this fact above any other was a passport to her
favour. It must be regretfully recognised, however, that it would have
been the same if Mr. Brown had mentioned the market-man.

Having thus successfully established his claim to notice, the Reporter,
as was his custom, went on to explain that he belonged to the moneyless
branch of the family.

Margaret Elizabeth assured him, in a grandmotherly manner, that it was
much better for a young man to have his way to make in the world than to
have too much money.

The Reporter owned this seemed to be the consensus of opinion. How the
strange notion had gained such vogue he could not understand, but there
was no use kicking when you were up against it.

"Of course, it must be hard work, but it must be interesting. Don't you
have exciting experiences?" Miss Bentley asked.

Oh, he had, certainly, and met such queer people, too. There was a
fellow who ran a Candy Wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner, for instance. "You
ought to meet him, really, Miss Bentley, though, of course, you couldn't
very well. He's a character, and I have puzzled my brains to discover
what he's doing it for."

Miss Bentley was interested and requested further enlightenment.

"Well, I have two theories in regard to him. He is an educated man, and
a gentleman, so far as I can tell, and I think he is either studying
some social problem, or he is a detective on some trail."

"I never thought----" began Margaret Elizabeth. "I mean," hastily
correcting herself, "I should never have thought of such an
explanation."

"He's up to something, you may be sure," Mr. Brown continued. "I like to
talk to him, and do, every chance I get."

Margaret Elizabeth certainly showed a flattering interest in all the
Reporter had to say. "Some day when you have become a great editor," she
assured him at parting, "I shall refer proudly to the afternoon when we
sat together in a cave and ate ice cream."

"Oh, now, Miss Bentley," the Reporter protested in some embarrassment,
"I'm sure I shall always think of it with pride, whatever I get to be,
though that probably won't be much."

This conversation was not without its influence upon Miss Bentley's
subsequent attitude toward the Candy Man. That some one else had found
him a unique and interesting personality was reassuring, and the
thought that he might be engaged on some secret mission was novel and
suggestive. She began to reconsider and readjust, and in future,
although she still avoided the Y.M.C.A. corner, she allowed her thoughts
to turn once in a while in that direction.

Meanwhile she paid two more visits to the Miser's library, on these
occasions laying deliberate siege to his reserve with all the charm of
her bright friendliness. She asked questions about his beloved prints;
intelligent questions, for Margaret Elizabeth had grown up in an
atmosphere of appreciation for things rare and fine. She chatted about
her father and his work, and even ventured some wise advice about fresh
air and its tonic effect. Indeed, it is a cause for wonder that she was
able at the same time to collect the material which took shape later in
that most erudite paper.

Under this invasion of youth and gaiety, the sombre, student atmosphere
became charged with a new, electric current. It was not owing solely to
Miss Bentley, however, for Sunday evening now frequently found the Candy
Man dropping in sociably to chat with Mr. Knight in his library.

In these days the Miser often sat leaning his head on his hand, a
meditative, half whimsical expression on his face, as if he found both
wonder and amusement in the chance that had so strangely brought these
young people across his threshold.

One Sunday afternoon the Pennington motor, having deposited Margaret
Elizabeth at the Vandegrift gate, with a scornful snort went on its
swift way to more select regions. It was the first really cold weather
of the season, and while she waited at the door Margaret Elizabeth
examined the thermometer, and then buried her nose in her muff.
"Dear me!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Why doesn't somebody come?"

She rang again with no uncertain touch upon the button this time, and
then, crunching across the frozen grass, peeped in at her own window,
where a glimpse of smouldering fire rewarded her. She returned to the
door to ring and rap, still with no response.

This was a most unusual state of affairs, for it was an inexorable
decree of Dr. Prue's that the telephone must never be left alone.
Somebody must have gone to sleep. The cold and the darkness deepened and
it became more and more evident that she was locked out. What should
she do? After canvassing the situation thoroughly, she could think of
nothing for it but to seek refuge with the Miser. Her acquaintance in
the neighbourhood was limited. Miss Kitty the dressmaker had gone to
vespers, and her cottage was dark. The apartment house was too far away.
From the Miser's library she could watch for the light which would
betoken the waking up of the delinquent one. So across the street, her
nose in her muff, ran Margaret Elizabeth.

The little housekeeper, Mrs. Sampson, who opened the door, was all
solicitude. Such a cold evening to be locked out! She knew Mr. Knight
would be glad to have her wait in the library. He had stepped out for
a little walk, though she had warned him it was too cold. Thus saying,
Mrs. Sampson ushered her in, and followed to see if the fire was all it
should be.

It was, for the Candy Man had just given it a vigorous poking and put on
fresh coal. The room was full of its pleasant light.

Mrs. Sampson was surprised to find him there. "Miss Bentley, this is
Mr. Reynolds, a friend of Mr. Knight's," she explained, adding that Miss
Bentley was locked out, and wished to sit by the window and watch for
her uncle to come back. "And if you'll excuse me, Miss Bentley, the cook
has her Sunday evenings out, and I get supper myself," she added as she
withdrew.

Margaret Elizabeth and the Candy Man faced each other in silence for a
second or two, then she said, very gravely indeed, "I am glad to meet
you, Mr. Reynolds."

"Thank you, Miss Bentley. May I give you a chair?" he asked.

"Thank you, I will sit here by the window." The window was some distance
from the fire, but as she sat down Margaret Elizabeth loosened her furs
as if she felt its heat.

The Candy Man waited, uncertain what course he should pursue.

"Please sit down, Mr. Reynolds. I should like to talk to you, now the
opportunity has so unexpectedly offered." She regarded him still
seriously, her hands clasped within her large muff. "I think you owe me
an explanation."

"I am not sure I understand." The Candy Man's heart was beating in an
absurd and disconcerting way, but he would keep his head and follow her
lead.

"Of course you are aware that you allowed me to talk to you that morning
in the park, in a--most unsuitable manner, without even----"

"How could I?" cried the Candy Man entreatingly. "I did not know."

"Did not know what?" demanded Miss Bentley sternly, as he hesitated.

"I thought perhaps--I was dreadfully lonely, you see, and I thought--it
was preposterous--but I hoped you--don't you see?--didn't mind talking
to an unknown Candy Man."

"Oh! was that it?" exclaimed Margaret Elizabeth in a tone difficult to
interpret. Did she think it preposterous, or not? It seemed to indicate
she found something preposterous. "Then you were disappointed in me,"
she added.

Never would the Candy Man admit such a thing. He had realised since then
what a cad he must have seemed, but----

"That, however, is neither here nor there," she continued, "since I did
not recognise you. It was----"

"Preposterous?" he suggested.

"Yes, preposterous, to suppose that I could. Why, it was nearly dark
that afternoon, and I----"

"Please don't rub it in. I know. You see I knew you so well."

"Me?" cried Margaret Elizabeth.

"I had seen you pass, I mean."

Again Miss Bentley said "Oh!" adding: "You are also the person who
laughed when I made an idiotic remark about lighthouses in the grocery."

The Candy Man protested. He had not laughed.

"Your eyes laughed. That is how I first discovered my mistake. Your
resemblance to Mr. McAllister is remarkable."

"So I have been told." The Candy Man shrugged his shoulders, ever so
little.

"However, to go back, I think you owe me an explanation, Mr. Reynolds,
considering how you allowed me to talk to you under a false impression.
I am not absolutely lacking in grey matter," she added, while a smile
curled her lips, "and I think you owe it to me to tell me why you became
a Candy Man."

"In return for the Fairy Godmother idea?" he asked mischievously.

Miss Bentley's brows drew together. "If you knew how bitterly I have
regretted all the foolish things I said that day, you would not laugh,"
she cried.

"Do not say that, please, Miss Bentley. I beg your pardon, and I am not
laughing. I could not. If you only knew what it all meant to me. How
I----"

His distress was so genuine that Margaret Elizabeth was touched. "Well,
never mind now. It can't be helped, and I am willing to have it in
return for the Fairy Godmother nonsense, if you choose to put it so."

And now perforce the Candy Man must explain himself.

"You see," he began, "I had been knocked out of everything through
a bad accident that occurred at my home near Chicago--a runaway.
Speaking of grey matter, there was some doubt for a time whether mine
was not permanently injured. However, I gradually recovered, but I was
still forbidden for another six months at least to do any brain work,
and ordered by my doctor to loaf in the fresh air. Doing nothing when
you are longing to get to work is no easy job. I left home with the
intention of going South, and stopped off here for no particular reason.
Perhaps I should have said that I have no family. My father died
something over a year ago. Oddly enough, in front of the station here
I met an Irish woman, once a servant in my father's house. She was
overjoyed to see me, and poured out her troubles. Her son, who ran a
candy wagon, had been taken ill with fever, and his employers would not
promise to keep the place for him, and altogether she was in hard lines,
this boy being the main support of a large family. So now you see how
the idea occurred to me. To amuse myself and keep the boy's place. And
having no family or friends to be disgraced----"

"No one has intimated there was any disgrace about it," Miss Bentley
interrupted. "At worst it can be called eccentric. It was also very,
very kind."

"Oh, now, Miss Bentley, thank you, but I can't let you overrate that.
Any help I have given was merely by the way. You must remember I was
in need of some occupation, and I assure you it has been very much of
a lark."

"Yes?" said Miss Bentley. "Then no doubt before long you will be writing
'The Impressions of a Candy Man,' or 'Life as Seen from a Candy Wagon.'
It will be new."

"Thanks for the suggestion, I'll consider it. But for the chance that
made me a Candy Man I should have missed a great deal--for one thing, a
realisation of the opportunity that awaits the Fairy Godmother Society."

"But Tim will soon be about again," said Margaret Elizabeth.

"Then I must look out for another job; but your remark implies some
further knowledge of Tim. I was not aware I had mentioned his name
even."

Miss Bentley bit her lip, then decided to smile frankly. "I met Tim
the other day," she said. "My cousin, Dr. Vandegrift, often visits St.
Mary's, and I sometimes go with her. Tim is a nice boy, and full of
praises for the kind gentleman who has done so much for him."

"And also, let me add, for the lovely young lady who gave him a red
rose, and----"

Margaret Elizabeth laughed. There was no getting ahead of this Candy
Man. Had he known all along, or had he just guessed? "I see a light at
last," she said, rising. "I must go, or they will be wondering what has
become of me." ...

"Yes, I know it was my afternoon in," said Uncle Bob plaintively, while
Margaret Elizabeth made toast at the grate and Dr. Prue set the table.
"I merely ran over to the drug store for a second, but Barlow was there
and I got to talking."

"It is quite unnecessary to explain, but I do wish, father, you would
refrain from speaking as if you were required to stay in. It was your
own proposition to let Nancy go. I could have made other arrangements."
Dr. Prue was aggrieved. There was no telling how many telephone calls
had been unanswered.

Margaret Elizabeth laughed. "You are absolutely untrustworthy, Uncle
Bob. Hereafter I shall carry a latch key."

"By the way, who was that young man who brought you home?" the doctor
asked.

"His name is Reynolds. He is a stranger here. I have met him once or
twice." This casual explanation was accompanied by side glances which
indicated to Uncle Bob that there was more in it than appeared on the
surface.

Margaret Elizabeth had been extremely reserved upon the subject of the
Candy Man. Uncle Bob had not heard a word of it till now, when, beside
the Little Red Chimney hearth, supper having been cleared away, and Dr.
Prue resting with a book on the office lounge, she told him the whole
story.

"You don't say so! That beats anything I ever heard. Well, I said it
would come out all right, didn't I?" Margaret Elizabeth's narrative was
punctured, as Mrs. Partington would have said, with many exclamations
such as these.

"I own you were right. It isn't as bad as it seemed. He is really very
gentlemanly and nice. Still, it is a bit awkward too," she added
thoughtfully.

It is possible she was thinking of Mrs. Gerrard Pennington at the
moment.




CHAPTER TEN

_In which the Little Red Chimney keeps Festival, and the Candy Man
receives an unexpected Invitation._


The Candy Man, letting himself in at his lodging house, one gloomy
Sunday afternoon, stumbled upon a deputation of pigeons, in a state
of fluttering impatience.

"She said to wait, and we thought you were never, never coming!" was
their chorus.

"Never is a long day," said the Candy Man. "What will you have?"

It appeared they were the bearers of a missive which read briefly and
to the point: "Her ladyship requests the pleasure of the Candy Man's
presence at the Pigeons' Christmas Tree, at four o'clock this
afternoon."

It had seemed to the Candy Man that he was altogether outside the
holiday world, that for him Christmas had ended with his visit to the
hospital that afternoon. He had ventured to send a basket of fruit to
his fellow lodgers, the invalid professor and his wife, and had played
Santa Claus to two or three newsboys who frequented the Y.M.C.A. corner
and to the small Malones, and the state of his exchequer scarcely
warranted anything more. The social calendar in the morning paper
overflowed with festivities for the week, and he had pleased his fancy
by picturing Miss Bentley, radiant and lovely, in the midst of them. He,
the lonely Candy Man, without the pale, could yet enjoy her pleasure in
imagination. And lo! this lonely Candy Man was bidden to a tree on
Christmas Eve, by her ladyship. He could not believe his eyes.

"It takes you a long time to read it," said Virginia. "You'd better
come. It's late."

Dark was beginning to fall outside, but the Little Red Chimney room was
full of firelight when the Candy Man was ushered in, in the wake of the
children, by cordial Uncle Bob. It was a frolicsome, magical light that
played about a row of red stockings hanging from the shelf above it;
that advanced to the farthest corner and then retreated; that coaxed and
dared the unlighted Christmas tree by the piano to wake up and do its
part; that gleamed in Miss Bentley's hair as she seated the pigeons in
a semicircle on the rug.

Was it the magic of the firelight, or the absence of the grey hat, or
the blue frock with its deep white collar, or, or--The Candy Man got no
further with his questions, for just then Margaret Elizabeth turned and
gave him her hand, explaining that they were so much stiller when they
sat on the floor. She added that it was very good of him to come--a
purely conventional and entirely inaccurate statement. He was also
instructed to sit on the sofa with Uncle Bob.

"And now," began Miss Bentley, standing with her back to the row of red
stockings and looking into the upturned faces, "we are going to be
rather quiet, for this, you know, is both Christmas Eve and Sunday.
First, we'll sing 'While Shepherds Watched,' very softly."

She sat down at the piano and struck a few chords, then her voice rose,
clear and sweet, the pigeons following her lead, a bit quaveringly at
first, but doing wonderfully well considering they were not song birds.
"She's been training them for weeks," Uncle Bob whispered.

After this came "Stille Nacht," and Uncle Bob joined in, and then the
Candy Man, and presently the entrance of Dr. Prue was proclaimed by a
vigorous alto. The effect was most gratifying to the performers, and
from the piano Margaret Elizabeth murmured, "Very good."

When the singing was over she took her seat on a low ottoman in the
midst of the children, who drew closer. "Next," she said, patting the
hand Virginia slipped within her arm, "comes the story, which on
Christmas Eve everybody should either hear or read for himself."

Stillness fell on the Little Red Chimney room, the pigeons listened in
breathless absorption, while, forgetting herself and her audience, her
hands loosely clasped on her knees, Margaret Elizabeth began the story
which, as often as it may be told, yet throbs with tenderness and
wonder. As she went on her eyes grew dark and deep, and in her face
shone something more than the sweetness and charm hitherto so endearing.
Was it a prophecy? A glimpse into the unsounded heart of her?

Dr. Prue shaded her eyes with her hand; Uncle Bob wiped his glasses; the
Candy Man's soul was stirred within him, but he gave no sign.

"And they brought gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh, to the little
Child in the manger; so now in keeping his birthday, we give each other
gifts and are happy because of the wonderful night so long ago," ended
Margaret Elizabeth.

After that it was no longer still in the Little Red Chimney room. Uncle
Bob set the tree alight, and her ladyship distributed the red stockings.
Nobody was left out, not even the Candy Man, or Nancy and Jenny hovering
in the background.

Upon occasions like the Pigeons' Christmas Tree we long to linger, but
they are evanescent. The Candy Man must see the children home after a
few brief words with Miss Bentley.

"The Fairy Godmother Society must have been organised, and my name
entered among its beneficiaries," he told her.

"I am glad if you liked it," she replied. "I thought you would.
To-morrow I am going to Pennington Park to stay till after New Year's,
but Christmas Eve belonged by rights to the Little Red Chimney." She
smiled, and the Candy Man nodded understandingly.

This much in the midst of the chatter that accompanied the putting on of
small coats and leggings.

"And I may hope that I am forgiven?" he had a chance to add as she gave
him her hand at parting.

Miss Bentley's eyes twinkled. "It will do no harm to hope," she told
him.

The Candy Man, his red stocking protruding from his overcoat pocket,
conducted the noisy flock to their homes, then turning southward he
walked on and on toward the edge of the town. As is fitting on Christmas
Eve, a fine snow had begun to fall, sifting silently over everything,
transforming even the ugly and pitiful with a mantle of beauty.

The Candy Man, striding on through the night, felt an unreasoning joy as
he thought of Margaret Elizabeth telling the story with the firelight on
her face. The world seemed throbbing with expectancy. Who could tell
what splendid event awaited its near fulfilment?




CHAPTER ELEVEN

_In which a radical change of atmosphere is at once noticed; which
shows how Miss Bentley repents of a too coming-on disposition, and lends
an ear to the advantages of wealth._


The Christmas fire was not cold upon the hearth of the Little Red
Chimney before Miss Bentley was whisked away to other scenes, into an
atmosphere so different that of necessity things took on another aspect.

Mrs. Gerrard Pennington found intense satisfaction in her niece's social
success. Given every advantage, she pointed out, one could never tell
how a girl would take, and Dick had brought up his daughter in such an
odd way. Yet in spite of everything, even this awkward arrangement of
living in two places, Margaret Elizabeth was popular beyond her fondest
hopes.

There were not wanting those who remarked that it would be a marvel if
she were not spoiled. Probably they were right, and Margaret Elizabeth,
at the flood tide of her social career, courted, fêted, the kingdoms of
this world at her feet, was in danger.

"And who sent this?" Mrs. Pennington demanded.

It was Christmas Day, and "this" was an Indian basket of holly and
mistletoe, conspicuous, among many costly floral offerings, by its
simplicity. The card which accompanied it read, "To her Ladyship, from
the Candy Man," but this Mrs. Pennington had not seen.

"Oh," answered her niece, "I don't know how to tell you who he is. He is
a stranger here--a Mr. Reynolds. I met him at Mr. Knight's, where you
remember I went to get some material for my paper for the Tuesday Club."

This was all true, and, unaccompanied by a heightened colour, might
have allayed her aunt's lurking suspicions, born of that unexplained
interview in the park with some one who was not Augustus.

Only once had Mrs. Pennington referred to this, asking half jokingly if
Margaret Elizabeth had ever discovered the identity of that person;
putting a somewhat disdainful emphasis upon "person."

"Never," Margaret Elizabeth could at that time assure her, and she
added, "I do not expect to, and certainly do not wish to."

Mrs. Pennington, however, had her intuitions in regard to this unknown
individual. She anticipated his reappearance, and, like a wise general,
in time of peace prepared for war. Keeping her vague fears to herself,
she increased her vigilance.

Annoyed because of that uncalled-for blush, far away from the Little Red
Chimney, with fairy-tales forgot, Margaret Elizabeth repeated her aunt's
question. After all, who was Mr. Reynolds? That which had so lately
seemed an adventure compounded of kindliness and fun, she now beheld
only as an awkward situation. She began to feel that she had overstepped
the bounds in asking him to the Christmas tree; and the red stocking!
What nonsense! Why should she have felt concerned over his loneliness?
Were there not many lonely people in the world? Might he not infer from
it all a rather excessive interest in him and his affairs? Her interview
with Tim at the hospital, for instance, though it had come about by the
purest chance, looked on the surface as if she had been bent upon
investigating him.

The Candy Man's offering, which she at first found so happily
significant and appropriate, now began to seem almost a piece of
presumption. It lay ignored if not forgotten, till its brown and
withered contents were tossed into the fire by one of the maids. Did
Miss Bentley wish her to save the basket?

No, Miss Bentley cared nothing for it. Or, wait--she liked sweet grass,
and on second thought she would keep it.

Never had the holiday season been so gay. There was not time for a
minute's connected thought. Margaret Elizabeth honestly tried to keep
her promise to stop and reflect for at least ten minutes a day, but
either she went to sleep, or fell into a waking dream that bore small
relation to the sober realities upon which she was supposed to dwell.

There were guests at Pennington Park for the holidays--English friends
of her uncle and aunt, persons of a broader culture than Margaret
Elizabeth had ever before encountered. They afforded her an object
lesson of the best that accrues from wealth and tradition, and is only
to be attained by means of them. Within herself she was aware of an
aptitude of her own for these things.

But half divining her niece's mood, Mrs. Gerrard Pennington skilfully
and subtly fostered it, and Augustus McAllister, with unexpected tact,
followed her lead.

Augustus was genuinely in love, and it brought out the best that was
in him. For the first time in his life something resembling humility
manifested itself, a humility which sat gracefully upon the possessor
of variously estimated millions. It seemed to say: "Here is one who,
although not brilliant, may be led into any desirable path." And with
his other substantial attractions he combined his full share of good
looks.

To be unresponsive was not in Miss Bentley's make-up, and the attentions
of Augustus assumed in these days a delicate and pleasing character.
What girl could be indifferent to the prestige born of the generally
accepted opinion that the position of mistress of the Towers was hers
for the word?

In truth, all this homage--and Augustus was far from being alone in
it--was to Margaret Elizabeth an exciting game, that need not be taken
too seriously. It was only when she thought of the Candy Man that she
became serious and annoyed. How impossible, in the atmosphere of
Pennington Park, appeared any explanation or justification of so absurd
a position as his!

[Illustration: COUSIN AUGUSTUS]

When, after a morning recital by the Musical Club, Miss Bentley was seen
walking down the avenue with Augustus McAllister, society seized upon it
as confirming an interesting rumour. It was absurd, of course. Margaret
Elizabeth did it quite innocently. She really felt the need of exercise
in the open air, and could not very easily dismiss Mr. McAllister, who
had accompanied her aunt and herself to the concert, and who also felt
the need of air.

Did she think of the Candy Man when they passed the Y.M.C.A. corner?
Yes, she did. Though she gave not so much as half a glance in the
direction of the Candy Wagon, she hoped he was not too busy to observe.
It might counteract possible false impressions in the past.

A few days later there appeared in a column of the _Evening Record_,
given up to such matters, an item regarding the soon-to-be-announced
engagement of a certain charming and beautiful girl, only recently a
resident of the city, and a young man of wealth and social position.

It brought Miss Bentley up short. She disliked newspaper gossip
extremely, and an allusion so faintly veiled that everyone must
understand, was under the circumstances most embarrassing, for the truth
was she had not been asked. Her cheeks burned. Yet it was thanks only to
some clever fencing on her part, and perhaps some words of caution to
Augustus from his mentor, that she had not been, and she knew in her
heart it must come soon.

Just when you were having a good time and did not wish to be bothered,
it was tiresome to have to decide momentous questions, she told herself
almost fretfully, as she was borne swiftly and smoothly downtown one
afternoon. There was the usual detention at the Y.M.C.A. corner, and
Margaret Elizabeth looked out and almost into the Candy Wagon before she
knew it. But there was no cause for alarm. Beneath the white cap of the
Candy Man shone the round Irish countenance of Tim Malone.

Was it Tim after all who had viewed her triumphal walk down the avenue?
The question brought not a hint of a smile to Miss Bentley's lips; and
this was a very grave symptom.

If Uncle Bob had been within reach! But he wasn't. He had run down to
Florida to look after his orange grove, and Dr. Prue was up to her eyes
in grip cases. There was every reason why Margaret Elizabeth should stay
on at Pennington Park.

So the Little Red Chimney had no chance to get in its work. In vain
Virginia looked from the dining-room window for its curling smoke. In
vain did the invalid sister of Miss Kitty, the dressmaker, dream of the
beautiful young lady who brought her roses. In vain did the postman and
the market-man inquire of Nancy when Miss Bentley was coming back. To
the Miser alone, who from his study window had also noted the deadness
of the Little Red Chimney, was the privilege of a word with the
enchantress accorded. It came about through Mrs. Gerrard Pennington's
interest in the furnishing of the new quarters of the Colonial Dames.

Hearing of a desirable print owned by Mr. Knight, which it was
understood he might be induced to part with, she drove thither to
canvass the matter, accompanied by her niece. On the way they picked
up Augustus, who knew nothing of prints, but was pleased to join the
expedition.

The Miser, beneath his grave courtesy, seemed taken aback by this
invasion of his solitude. Mrs. Pennington's conventional suavity plainly
embarrassed him. He smiled indeed at Margaret Elizabeth, remarking as he
spread out his engravings that it had been long since he last saw her.

The impulse was strong upon her to follow him to his desk and ask if he
had any news of the Candy Man. There were moments when she thought it
strange she had had no word. These were but fleeting moments, however;
for the most part she succeeded, or thought she succeeded, in dismissing
him to the limbo of the past. So now she resisted the impulse to ask
news of him.

When it came to negotiations Margaret Elizabeth and Augustus, leaving
Mrs. Pennington to conduct them, moved about the room, viewing the
Miser's curios.

"Do you care for mezzotints?" she asked him.

"I don't know the first thing about them," Augustus owned. "In fact
never saw one."

She laughed. "Oh, yes, you have. Ever so many of the Reynolds and Romney
portraits were reproduced in mezzotint. If I am not mistaken there is
one hanging in your own hall."

Augustus gazed at her in undisguised admiration. "I don't see how you
learn so much, Miss Bentley. I have no doubt I have a lot of things you
could help me to appreciate."

From this dangerous ground she moved hastily, calling attention to the
portrait above the mantel. Mr. McAllister was more at home here.

"A rattling good picture. General Waite, by the way," he informed her,
"was own cousin to my grandmother on my mother's side. My great
grandfather and his father were brothers, don't you know."

"Indeed!" said Margaret Elizabeth, politely. The relationship did
not interest her, but she wondered, in annoyance, why the cousin of
Augustus, on his mother's side, should look down on her with the eyes of
the Candy Man. Stern eyes they were, with a sparkle of humour behind the
sternness.

On the way home Mrs. Pennington was stirred to reminiscence. "One of
the first parties I ever attended was in that old house," she said.
"It must have been thirty-five years ago. I was a very young girl--barely
seventeen. General Waite was a most courtly man, and his wife was quite
famous for her beauty. It was there I met Mr. Pennington. He and the
general's nephew, Robert Waite, were great friends. They went to college
together. He disappeared strangely. I remember Gerrard was dread fully
upset about it at the time. It was just before our marriage."

To all this Margaret Elizabeth only half listened. The eyes of the
general lingered reproachfully with her, and perhaps were at the bottom
of that policy of postponement with which Augustus was met when the
inevitable moment came.

Just a little time was all she asked. Mr. McAllister was talking of a
trip to Panama; let him go, and on his return he should have his answer.

Miss Bentley was very sweet as she spoke thus; eminently worth waiting
for. So Augustus went to Panama, and she was left to argue matters with
herself.

During the process she grew pale. Mixed up with her arguments was that
foolish idea that she ought to have heard something from the Candy Man.
Had he seen that item in the _Evening Record_?

Mrs. Pennington noticed the pallor, but treated it lightly. Margaret
Elizabeth was tired out, but now Lent was here she would rest. She was
worn to death herself, but she would recuperate, and surely her niece,
who was years younger, could do the same. She failed to take into
consideration the complications lacking in her own case. In fact, having
brought matters to the present status, Mrs. Pennington allowed herself
to relax.

Mr. Gerrard Pennington looked at Margaret Elizabeth from beneath his
bushy brows. Confound them, what were they doing to her? She had a way
of joining him in the library, and sitting with a book in her lap, which
she seldom read.

One day, laying down his paper, and after a cautious glance over his
shoulder, he remarked: "Did it ever occur to you, Margaret Elizabeth,
that you don't have to marry anybody?"

She stared at him with surprised eyes, in which a smile slowly dawned.
"Why, Uncle Gerry, what do you mean? Of course I don't have to."

"There is a great deal in suggestion," continued Mr. Pennington. "Keep
telling people a certain thing, confront them with it on all occasions,
and they will be influenced in spite of themselves; and it has occurred
to me----"

"Yes?" said Margaret Elizabeth.

"Well, that it applies in your case." Mr. Pennington cleared his throat.
"A certain person whom we know has behaved very well of late; better
than I thought was in him, but--unless you are pretty sure you can't
live without him--Now this is rank treason on my part, but don't be too
soft-hearted, Margaret Elizabeth."

Mr. Pennington returned to his stock-market reports, and silence
reigned, but presently two hands rested on his shoulders, and a velvet
cheek touched his for a moment. "Thank you, Uncle Gerry," said Margaret
Elizabeth.




CHAPTER TWELVE

_Which shows Miss Bentley recovering from a fit of what Uncle Bob
calls Cantankerousness; in which a shipwrecked letter is brought to
light, and Dr. Prue is called again to visit the child of the Park
Superintendent._


"And he turned into a splendid prince (he had been one all the time
really, you know), and he laid all his riches at Violetta's feet, and
made her a princess, because she had been true to him through thick and
thin."

Virginia's voice rose in triumphant climax.

"That's all very fine in a fairy-tale, Virginia, and it is an extremely
good one for a little girl like you to make up out of her own head. But
you know in real life it is different." Margaret Elizabeth gazed
pensively into the fire.

Virginia, prone upon the hearth-rug, was disposed to argue what she did
not understand. "How different?"

"Well, in a fairy-tale you can have things as you want them, but in
real life you get tangled up in what other people want, and with duty
and common sense; and when you determine to follow your--" Margaret
Elizabeth was going to say "heart," but changed to "intuitions," "you
are left high and dry on a desert island."

Virginia was to be excused if she failed to make head or tail of this.
"I wish the Candy Man would come back," she remarked irrelevantly. "He
was much nicer than Tim. He liked fairy-tales. He said he was coming
some time."

"Oh, did he?" said Miss Bentley.

The reference to a desert island, and a disposition to quarrel with
fairy-tales, go to show that while she was decidedly more like herself
than in the last chapter, her recovery was not yet complete. In fact
Margaret Elizabeth was suffering from the irritability that so often
accompanies convalescence. Cantankerousness was Uncle Bob's word for it,
and he defended it with all the eloquence of which he was master, his
finger on the page in the dictionary where it was to be found in good
and regular standing.

It really did not matter what you called it; the point was, that in an
argument with her aunt, Margaret Elizabeth had gone further than she
intended; had said what had better have been left unsaid. This she
confessed to Dr. Prue.

"Let me see your tongue," commanded that professional lady, regarding
her searchingly.

Margaret Elizabeth displayed the unruly member, laughing as she did so.

"What did you say to Mrs. Pennington?"

"We were speaking," Margaret Elizabeth answered meekly, "of gratitude,
and Aunt Eleanor said, as you are always hearing people say, that there
is little or none of it in the world. You see, in some matter which came
up in the Colonial Dames, Nancy Lane sided against her. 'And after all
I've done for her!' cried Aunt Eleanor. I said I thought gratitude was
an overrated virtue anyway, and that to expect a person to vote your way
because you had been good to her, was a kind of graft."

"Humph!" said Dr. Prue.

"I know it was a dreadful, dreadful thing to say." Tears were in
Margaret Elizabeth's eyes. "When she has been loveliness itself to me.
There it is, you see. I have thought about it, and thought about it,
until I'm all mixed up."

"What did your aunt say?"

"She was very dignified. She had not expected to hear such a thing from
me. Then she walked away."

"I hope you asked her pardon."

"I had no chance. She has gone to Chicago--was on her way to the station
then. I will, of course."

"For a young thing your ideas are not bad, though your problem is
entangled in foolish convention, personal pride and so on. But neither
you nor I was born to set the world right. Now cheer up and think no
more about it for the present. Be ready at two o'clock to go to the park
with me. The superintendent's child is ill again."

Having delivered her prescription, Dr. Prue left, and her patient
returned to her hearth-stone and an endeavour to be honest with
herself. Virginia had interrupted this most difficult process with her
fairy-tale. While it could not be said to bear upon the situation, after
she had left Margaret Elizabeth was conscious of a faint lightening of
the fog.

As they sped smoothly toward the park, in the new electric, Margaret
Elizabeth driving, Dr. Prue exclaimed, "There, I'm forgetting that
letter again." Unfastening her bag she held it open while she continued,
"I hope you'll forgive whoever is to blame, but when the hall was being
cleaned yesterday, James fished this out of the umbrella jar. Dear knows
how it got there or when; it looks as if it had been in a shipwreck."
She produced a stained and sorry-looking missive from her bag. "You can
just make out the address, the postmark is quite gone," she added,
laying it in her companion's lap. "You haven't missed an important
letter, have you?"

"Not that I know of," Margaret Elizabeth replied with a laugh that was
a bit unsteady. "It is probably nothing of value." She kept her gaze on
the road ahead. "Just slip it in my pocket, please."

All the rest of the way to the park her heart thumped uncomfortably.
Could it be? Of course not, it was an advertisement. Why get excited?
Meanwhile she chatted pleasantly with Dr. Prue.

"All you need is fresh air and a simple life for a while. Your colour
has come back wonderfully," the doctor remarked as they drew up at the
cottage gate. "Will you wait for me here?"

"If you don't mind, I think I'll go into the park, and if I'm not back
by the time you are ready, don't wait. I can take the street car."

Turning in at the entrance to the park, Margaret Elizabeth was for a
fleeting moment aware of a Candy Wagon standing at the curb a few yards
away. There was nothing unusual in this except the odd way in which it
fitted into the situation, and the next moment she had forgotten
everything but the letter in her hand.

She walked slowly down the path. The April sunshine sifted through a
faint and feathery greenness overhead, the air was clear and fresh. She
was thinking that she had seen just one little scrap of the Candy Man's
writing--on the card accompanying the Christmas basket; and this on the
letter was blurred and stained, yet she was sure of it. He had written.
She had been sure he would. She was glad. She would be honest with
herself. She wanted him for a friend. In many ways she liked him better
than any one she had met this winter. She wanted to know more about him.

She tried to tear the letter open, but for all it was so damaged the
paper had remained tough. She would wait to read it till she reached the
summer house. That little vine-hung arbour had been in her thought ever
since Dr. Prue proposed to bring her down to the park. She had a foolish
desire to sit there and look at the river, and go on being honest with
herself.

Margaret Elizabeth, mounting the steps and looking at her letter as she
did so, was confronted by somebody who started up in surprise from the
bench where she had sat with her flowers that autumn day.

For one surprised moment she and the stranger faced each other, then
Miss Bentley exclaimed, "I saw the wagon at the gate, but I didn't know
it was yours." And then the mischief faded into simple honest gladness
as she held out her hand. "I certainly did not expect to see you," she
added, "but you are an unexpected sort of person."

"Nothing so wonderful as the chance of meeting you occurred to me for a
moment," the Candy Man assured her. "In fact I was not certain you cared
to see me." Those same pleasant eyes, so emphatically not the eyes of
Augustus, looked into hers questioningly.

Margaret Elizabeth held up the letter. "It was shipwrecked," she said.
"I got it only a few minutes ago. I haven't read it. I thought it was
you who didn't care to be friends."

The Candy Man did not exactly understand how a letter could be
shipwrecked in an overland journey of ten hours, but he dismissed it as
of no importance. "It isn't worth reading now," he said. "It was just
to make my adieus and ask if some time when I had lived down my past,"
here he smiled, "I might come back and tell you my strange story. I was
counting on your willingness to be friends. You remember you said it
would do no harm to hope."

"Oh, did I? And when you did not hear from me, what did you think?
Honestly," asked Margaret Elizabeth.

"I thought of course there must be a reason. A shipwreck did not occur
to me."

"Do you mean a reason for not being friends? But you came."

"The suspense was too much for me. I haven't many friends; and besides,
this is on the way to Texas."

"So you are going to Texas this time?"

It seemed the Candy Man had heard of an opening there.

Margaret Elizabeth wanted to ask why he had come to the park, but
something told her not to; instead she said, looking away to the shining
river, "I know of no reason why we should not be friends. So I am ready
to hear the story you speak of. Is it more strange than the adventures
of a Candy Wagon?" Her eyes came back and met his as they had done the
day when the conversation turned upon fairy godmothers. Margaret
Elizabeth was not spoiled.

"It is more serious," was his reply. "In fact, it is very serious.
The Candy Wagon was a mere episode. What I wish to tell you now goes
deeper."




CHAPTER THIRTEEN

_In which the Candy Man relates his story, and the Miser comes upon
Volume I of the shabby book with the funny name._


"I want you to know all about me," began the Candy Man, taking from his
pocket the shabby little book Virginia had once remarked on, "so there
may be no more wrong impressions."

They sat in the sunshine on the top step of the little pavilion, facing
the river. Margaret Elizabeth, supporting her chin in her hand, regarded
him gravely. The west wind was cool on their faces.

"I have often imagined myself telling you," he went on. "Not that there
is much to it, besides its strangeness. In fact, to be brief, I don't
know who I am."

The surprise in Miss Bentley's eyes caused him to add quickly: "Not that
I am a foundling. But my father and mother were lost at sea when I was
three years old. We were coming from Victoria to San Francisco, when the
steamer went down. Only a few of the passengers were saved, I among
them."

"How sad and terrible!" cried Margaret Elizabeth. "Can you remember it?
How lost and lonely you must have been! Poor little child!"

"I recall it only in a vague way," he answered, "confused with what has
since been told me. When it was known that my parents were lost, a man
and his wife, fellow passengers, offered to adopt me. Beyond the name
'Robert Deane, Wife and Child,' on the list at the ship's office, they
were unable to learn anything about me, and I was too young and
bewildered to give any clue."

"That is very strange," said Margaret Elizabeth. "Your new father and
mother were kind to you?"

"So kind I soon forgot the terror and loneliness, and grew happy and
content. Everything was done to make me forget, and I think while they
made every effort to find out something about me, they were glad when
they failed. I wish now that my childish memories might have been
fostered, for I find myself reaching back into a mist full of vague
shapes.

"My new father was a civil engineer, whose work took him here, there and
everywhere throughout the broad West. I never knew a permanent home. My
adopted mother died when I was twelve. After that came boarding school
and college. About the time I left college my father's health failed,
and for several years he was helpless and very dependent upon me, so
I gave up my plan of entering a mining school.

"It was during his illness that he began to speak to me of my own
parents. He had talked to them on several occasions during the voyage,
and he described them as young people of refinement and education. My
mother, he thought from her speech, was English. They rather held aloof,
he said, and seemed disinclined to mention their own affairs. While he
was ill the news came to us of the finding in a storage warehouse in San
Francisco of an old trunk which it seemed probable had belonged to my
parents. Without going into detail, I may say it was through an old
acquaintance of my adopted father's, who knew the circumstances of my
adoption, that we heard of it. He had some interest in the warehouse,
which was about to be torn down and rebuilt. This trunk was found in
some forgotten corner where it had lain for twenty-five years."

"And did it throw any light?" asked Margaret Elizabeth.

"Not much, it rather deepened the mystery. There was little of
significance in it, but this book and a package of letters. From them I
learned nothing definite, but gathered the unwelcome probability that my
father was under some sort of cloud, and was not using his real name.
This was a matter of inference--of deduction, largely, but it was plain
he had left his home in some sort of trouble.

"It is not easy to piece together scattered allusions, when you have no
clue. The letters were most of them written by my father to my mother,
just before and soon after their marriage, with one or two from her to
him. One of these, which I found between the leaves of this little book,
I want you to read. It concludes my story, and to my mind lightens it a
little."

The letter the Candy Man held out to Margaret Elizabeth was written on
thin paper, in a delicate angular hand.

"Ought I to read it?" she demurred. "Are you sure she would like it?"

"Somehow I am very sure," he answered. "And I feel that it will be a
grip on our friendship. I have told you the worst, I wish you to know
the best of me."

She acquiesced, and, an elbow on her knee, shading her eyes with her
hand, she read the letter, whose date was thirty years ago. Far back
in the past this seemed to Margaret Elizabeth, yet it was a girl like
herself who wrote.

The first sentences were almost meaningless, so strong was the feeling
that she had no right to be reading it at all, but as she went on she
forgot her scruples. It was evidently a reply to a letter from her lover
in which he had spoken of the cloud that hung over his name, and it was
a confession of her faith in him, girlish, sweet and tender. "I trust
you, Robert," it said. "It is in you to do heedless things, to be
reckless, if only because you are young and eager and strong; but it
is not in you to be dishonourable; of this I am as certain as I am of
anything in life. Some day the truth will be known and you will be
cleared, but whether it is or no, I choose to walk beside you. I choose
it gladly, happily. I write the words again, gladly, happily, Robert.
Yours, Mary."

"Oh!" cried Margaret Elizabeth, lifting a glowing face, "I love Mary."

"She was brave and unselfish," said the Candy Man.

Margaret Elizabeth nodded. "Yes, that is one side of it. Still, you see,
she was sure, and it was, as she says, a joy to cast in her lot with
him. 'Gladly, happily.'" Her eyes shone. She gazed far away down the
river. The wind blew little tendrils of bright hair across her cheek.
"It must be so when you care very much," she went on.

"But," argued the Candy Man, "under the stress of very noble feeling
people sometimes do foolish things, do they not?"

"But this was not. Do you think for a moment Mary ever regretted it?
I see what you mean by the best of you. It is something to have such
credentials." Margaret Elizabeth's gaze met the Candy Man's, and her
eyes were deep as they had been on Christmas Eve, in the firelight.

Oh, Margaret Elizabeth, it is your own fault, for being so dear, so
unworldly! Could you, can you, cast in your lot with an unknown Candy
Man? He has no business to ask you. He did not mean to, but only to
prepare the way. He knows he is no great catch, even from the point of
view of a Little Red Chimney. These are not the precise words of the
Candy Man, but something like them....

So absorbed was Margaret Elizabeth in the thought of Mary, she was a bit
slow in taking in their meaning. She gave him one startled glance, and
then looked down, as it happened, upon the shabby little book which lay
on the step between them. Absently she drew it toward her, and with
fingers that trembled, opened it, as if to find her answer in its pages.
Then a smile began faintly to curl about her lips, and she read aloud
from the book:

    _"What we find then to accord with love and reason, that we may
    safely pronounce right and good."_


"Judged at the bar of reason I fear my case is hopeless," protested the
Candy Man, putting out his hand to close the book.

But Margaret Elizabeth clasped it to her breast. "I see nothing
unreasonable in it," she declared stoutly. As she spoke a faded crimson
flower fell in her lap.

Somewhat later in the afternoon, Miss Bentley and the Candy Man,
walking together along the river path, had they not been so engrossed
in their own affairs, might have recognised the tall, stooping figure
of the Miser strolling slowly ahead of them. It was for a minute only,
for near a turn in the path he bent forward and disappeared in a thicket
of althea bushes. At this season it was not a dense thicket, and Mr.
Knight, poking in the soft mould with his cane in search of a certain
tiny plant, had no thought of hiding, but, as it chanced, was unobserved
by his friends.

"Oh, Margaret Elizabeth," her companion was saying as they passed, "you
are so dear! I have no business to be telling you so, but indeed I can't
help it."

And she with a little laugh replied: "I am glad you can't, Candy Man."
And the next moment they were gone around the turn.

That was all, but it was enough. What rarer flower was likely to come
the Miser's way, on this or any day?

He stood and looked after them. These two had brought into his grey
life the touch of golden youth. He began to tremble under the force
of a wonderful thought. He sought a bench and sank upon it. It would
be a solution of his problem. He had come out to-day into the spring
sunshine, feeling his burden more than he could bear, for in his pocket
was a letter which put an end to the hope he had long cherished of at
length righting a great wrong.

There must be a way of doing what he wished. The consent of the Candy
Man once gained, that hateful fortune, which through these years had
been slowly crushing him, might become a minister of joy and well being,
might make possible for others those best things of life that he had
missed.

The thought thrilled him. He rose and walked on, back to the pavilion,
where he paused again to rest. There on the step lay the shabby book
with the funny name and the small oval bit cut from the fly leaf,
beneath which was the Candy Man's name, Robert Deane Reynolds.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN

_Shows how Mrs. Gerrard Pennington, unhappy and distraught, beseeches
Uncle Bob to help her save Margaret Elisabeth; also how Mr. Gerrard
Pennington comes to the rescue, and how in the end his wife submits
gracefully to the inevitable, which is not so bad after all._


When Mrs. Gerrard Pennington was shown into the room of the Little Red
Chimney, there was nobody there. A chilly wind outside, which dashed
the rain against the windows, only served to call attention to the
pleasantness within. It was indeed an aggressively cheerful room,
entirely out of keeping with Mrs. Pennington's mood. The open piano,
the row of thrifty ferns on the window-sill, the new novel on the table
with a foreign letter between its leaves, and the work basket beside
it--which, by the way, was of sweet grass--all sang the same song to
the accompaniment of the fire's quiet crackle.

The burden of the song was Margaret Elizabeth. You saw her sitting bolt
upright on the sofa, being very intense about something, or lost in
thought, elbows on knees, on the ottoman beside the hearth, or occupied
with that bit of embroidery, her curling lashes almost on her cheek. Oh,
Margaret Elizabeth, how could you? How could you?

Mrs. Pennington, pacing uneasily back and forth, glanced at the music on
the piano rack.

  "Oh, stay at home, my heart, and rest,
  Home-keeping hearts are happiest,"

it admonished her. In this disarming atmosphere she began to feel
herself the victim of some wretched dream. Yet here in her bag was
Margaret Elizabeth's note, found awaiting her on her return from Chicago
an hour ago.

In it her niece apologised contritely for the inexcusable manner in
which she had spoken, and continued: "It makes me unhappy, dearest
Aunt Eleanor, to think of disappointing you, for you have been the
kindest aunt in the world, but I have discovered in the last few
days what I ought to have known all along, that I cannot marry Mr.
McAllister. The reason is there is some one else. He is neither rich
nor of distinguished family, but there are things that count for more,
at least to me. I shall see you very soon, and explain more fully.
In the meantime think kindly, if you can, of your niece,

MARGARET ELIZABETH."

[Illustration: MRS. GERRARD PENNINGTON]

This as it stood was bad enough, wrecking her dearest hopes at the
moment when they had seemed most secure; but taken in connection with
a story related in artless innocence by her travelling companion of
yesterday, Teddy Brown, to use one of that gentleman's cherished
phrases, it spelled tragedy.

The Reporter had not been bent on mischief. Far from it. He was merely
grappling bravely with the task of being agreeable to the great lady.
Surely it was but natural that in the course of a long conversation the
Candy Man's curious resemblance to Augustus should suggest itself as a
topic; and given a gleam of something like interest in his companion's
eyes, it was easy to continue from bad to worse.

He lived in the same apartment house as Virginia, and from her he
had heard of the Christmas tree, and the Candy Man's presence on the
occasion; also of that old accident on the corner in which the Candy
Man had figured as Miss Bentley's rescuer. No wonder those intuitions
regarding a person who was not Augustus should have risen to torture
Mrs. Pennington. All this circumstantial evidence was very black against
Margaret Elizabeth, seemingly so honest and frank. No wonder Mrs.
Pennington was distraught.

Meanwhile, wherever her heart might be, Margaret Elizabeth herself
was out. Uncle Bob, coming in, paper in hand, to greet the visitor
cordially, could not imagine where she had gone, and peered around the
room as if after all she might have escaped their notice. If she wasn't
in, he was confident she would be, in the course of a few minutes, which
confidence was not a logical deduction from known facts, but merely an
untrustworthy inference, born of his surprise at finding her out at all.

Placing a chair for Mrs. Pennington, he took one himself and regarded
her genially. Some minutes of polite conversation followed, in the
course of which Mrs. Pennington, concealing her agitation, spoke of her
journey to Chicago in quest of colonial furnishings. Mr. Vandegrift in
his turn brought forward Florida and orange groves.

But Margaret Elizabeth delayed her coming, and Mrs. Pennington could
stand it no longer. "Mr. Vandegrift," she began, after the silence that
followed the last word on oranges, "I regret that my niece is not here,
yet it may be as well to speak to you first. I may say, to make an
appeal to you. You are, I am sure, fond of Margaret Elizabeth." She
played nervously with the fastening of her shopping bag.

Uncle Bob looked at her in surprise, then at the toe of his shoe. "I
think I may safely admit it," he owned, crossing his knees and nodding
his head.

"Then, Mr. Vandegrift, I beseech you, with all the feeling of which I am
capable, to unite with me in saving this misguided girl." At this point
all her intuitions and fears rallied around Mrs. Pennington, and gave a
quiver to her voice.

Uncle Bob was astonished at her tone, and said so.

"I assure you, Mr. Vandegrift, I have her own word for it." She produced
a note from her bag.

"Her word for what?" he asked.

"Why, for--oh, Mr. Vandegrift, let us not waste time in futile fencing.
You must know that Margaret Elizabeth has deceived me; has been guilty
of base ingratitude; has been meeting clandestinely a person--a mere
adventurer. I can scarcely bring myself to say it. My brother Richard's
daughter!" Mrs. Pennington had recourse to her handkerchief.

Uncle Bob uncrossed his knees and sat bolt upright. "Madame," he
exclaimed, "I am sorry for your distress, whatever its cause, but let me
assure you, you are under some grave mistake. My niece has met no one
clandestinely, and is incapable of deceit and treachery."

"Do I understand then that it was with your connivance?"

"I have connived at nothing, Madame, and I know of no adventurer." Uncle
Bob took his penknife from his pocket and tapped on the table with it.
His manner was legal in the extreme. He was enjoying himself.

Mrs. Pennington looked over her handkerchief. "But she says,
herself----"

"Says she has been guilty of deceit and treachery? Has been meeting an
adventurer clandestinely? Pardon me, but this is incredible."

"What is incredible, Uncle Bob?" came a voice from the half-open door,
unmistakably that of the accused. "I'll be there as soon as I get off my
raincoat," it added.

"It is hopeless to try to make you understand," Mrs. Pennington almost
sobbed, the while sounds from the hall indicated that some one beside
Margaret Elizabeth was removing a raincoat. A horrible dread suddenly
smote her, lest it be that person. A sleepless night and her distress
had unnerved her. She felt herself unequal to the encounter.

She glanced about helplessly for a way of escape, but there was none.
"Tell him not to come in. I cannot see him now," she begged tragically
of Uncle Bob, who, honestly mystified now, stood between her and the
door, looking from it to her.

"She says not to come in," he repeated to Margaret Elizabeth's
companion, who was following her in.

"Why, Aunt Eleanor, I didn't know it was you! They told me your train
was late. And oh, what is the matter? What are you crying about? Is it
I?" Margaret Elizabeth, with raindrops on her hair, knelt beside her
aunt and embraced her, pressing a cool cheek against that lady's
fevered one.

Mrs. Pennington, her face hidden in her hands, continued to murmur, "I
cannot see him. I cannot see him."

"In the name of heaven, Eleanor, why can't you see me? Why must I not
come in?" demanded a familiar voice which brought her to with a shock.

"Gerrard!" she cried, in her surprise revealing a sadly tear-stained
countenance.

Uncle Bob beat a retreat into the hall, where he paused, chuckling to
himself.

"Certainly it is I. Who should it be?" said her husband, taking a seat
beside her. "Why are you making such a sight of yourself, my dear? When
I telephoned out to know if you had arrived, they said you had and had
gone out again immediately, no one knew where. I came out to talk over
some business with William Knight, and when I was leaving I saw your car
over here, and thought I'd join you; but if my presence is unbearable,
I will withdraw." Mr. Pennington smiled at Margaret Elizabeth.

"Don't be silly, please, I have had a most trying day. I don't expect
you to understand."

Mrs. Pennington was recovering her poise. There was something
irresistibly steadying in her husband's matter-of-fact statement, and in
the sight of her niece sitting back on her heels and looking up at her
with lovely, solicitous eyes. Treachery and deceit became meaningless
terms in such connection.

"You haven't given us a chance to understand, Eleanor. What is the
trouble?" Mr. Pennington demanded.

"Uncle Gerry, I am afraid it is I," said Margaret Elizabeth, picking up
the note from the floor where it had fallen. "I am sorry, you know I am,
that I can't do as she wishes, but you understand that I can't. Tell
her, please, that I did honestly try to think I could, but it wasn't of
any use."

"Oh, come now, Eleanor, if that is it, of course we wanted Margaret
Elizabeth up at the Park; but the young people of this generation like
to manage their own affairs, as we did before them." Mr. Pennington
looked quizzically at his niece. "She's been getting up a bit of
melodrama for our benefit, that's all. If you will pardon the
suggestion, my dear, I think possibly it is you who do not understand."

Margaret Elizabeth, rising from her lowly position, threw him a kiss
over her aunt's head.

"How can I be expected to, with everything shrouded in mystery?" cried
Mrs. Pennington. "Why have I never heard of this person before? Why was
I left to be told dreadful things by a reporter?"

"A reporter!" cried Margaret Elizabeth, in her turn aghast.

"Nonsense! If you heard anything dreadful you know Margaret Elizabeth
well enough to know it was not true. But how in the world could a
reporter have got hold of it?"

"You speak so confidently, Gerrard, tell me, what do you know about this
man?" Mrs. Pennington looked from her niece to her husband. "Margaret
Elizabeth seems to have completely won you to her side," she added.

"It is really a very strange story, Eleanor, and to begin at the end of
it, we have quite sufficient evidence, in my opinion, to prove that he
is the son of my old comrade, Robert Waite."

Mrs. Pennington fixed surprised eyes upon her husband. Margaret
Elizabeth sat down and folded her hands in her lap.

"You recall how Rob disappeared, without a word to any of his friends?
It was not till some years after the general's death that I had the
least clue to it; then William Knight came to me to know if I could
give any help in tracing him. He owned that there had been some trouble
between General Waite and Robert, and that the latter had been unjustly
treated. I couldn't give him any assistance, and I never discussed it
with him again. Knight was always close-mouthed, and it was only the
other day that I learned what the trouble was. It seems the general
suspected his nephew of taking a large sum of money from the safe in his
library. It was one of those cases of complete circumstantial evidence.
Rob was known to have lost money on the races. He was the only one
beside the general himself who had access to the safe, and who knew that
this money, several thousand dollars, was there at this time. That is,
so it was supposed.

"Knowing them both, one can easily understand the outcome. Robert
disappeared, and a few years later, when the general died, he left his
fortune to William Knight, his wife's nephew. Then after some little
time the real thief turned up. I won't go into that, further than to
say that it was through a deathbed confession to a priest. Since then
Knight has been searching far and wide for some trace of Robert, only
to receive last week the evidence of his death twenty-five years ago.
And now comes the strange part of the story. The very day on which
he received this news, Knight came by chance upon a book which he
recognised as once the property of Robert Waite. The owner's name was
cut from the fly leaf, but below it was written the name of a young
man whose acquaintance he had made last winter, Robert Deane Reynolds.
Deane was Rob's middle name, so naturally it led to an investigation."

Mr. Pennington looked over at Margaret Elizabeth. "Have I told a
straight story?" he asked.

"There were letters, you know," she prompted.

"Oh, yes. This young man had letters which I could have identified
anywhere."

Mrs. Pennington was interested. She asked questions. That absurd story
about a Candy Wagon was untrue then? But how had Margaret Elizabeth met
this person? She still referred to him as a person. And somehow the
united efforts of Margaret Elizabeth and Mr. Pennington failed to clear
up the mystery, though they did their best.

Even if the Candy Wagon episode was to be regarded as humorous, though
it did not present itself in that light to Mrs. Pennington, how could
Margaret Elizabeth have asked a Candy Man to her Christmas tree?

"But you see, by that time I knew he wasn't real, Aunt Eleanor, and
anyway--"

"Now go slow, Margaret Elizabeth," cautioned her uncle. "At heart you
are a confounded little socialist, but take my advice and keep it to
yourself." He was thinking of what she had said to him only the day
before: "You see, Uncle Gerry, you can't have everything. You have
to choose. And while I like bigness and richness, I like Little Red
Chimneys and what they stand for, best. I want to be on speaking terms
with both ends, you see."

"It is odd," Mr. Pennington went on, "the tricks heredity plays, and
that this young man and Augustus McAllister should both hark back to a
common ancestor for their general characteristics of build and feature.
I was struck with the resemblance, myself."

"It was what first attracted me," owned Margaret Elizabeth demurely.

The name of Augustus still had painful associations for Mrs. Pennington.
She rose. "Really we must be going," she said. At some future time she
felt she might be able to meet Mr. Reynolds or Waite, or whatever his
name was, with equanimity, but now she was thankful to hear he had gone
back to Chicago for some papers.

She received Margaret Elizabeth's farewell embrace languidly. "Since
there is such weight of authority in your favour, and matters have
developed so strangely, there is nothing for me to say. I dislike
mystery, and prefer to have things go on regularly and according to
precedent. It is your welfare I have at heart."

Mr. Pennington's good-by was different.

"I don't wonder you like it down here, Margaret Elizabeth--this room,
you know," he said.

As they drove homeward Mrs. Pennington was engaged in mentally
reconstructing affairs. "Of course," she heard herself saying, "it was
a disappointment to me, but romantic girls are not to be controlled by
common-sense aunts, and really it might be worse." And she remarked
aloud: "The fact that he is a nephew of General Waite means something."

"That's so," assented her husband. "Something like half a million.
Old Knight is determined to hand it all over." He smiled to himself,
then added: "He came to see me--the young man, I mean. I liked him.
He suggested Rob a little without resembling him. Very gentlemanly;
nice eyes."




CHAPTER FIFTEEN

_In which the Fairy Godmother Society is again mentioned, among other
things_.


"But it is really embarrassing when I had made up my mind to marry a
poor Candy Man to have it turn out so. I rather liked defying common
sense," said Margaret Elizabeth.

The Candy Man had made a hurried journey to Chicago, and was back before
the rain was over, and while it was still cold enough for a fire, so
that his old dream of sometime sitting by the Little Red Chimney's
hearth was coming true. Margaret Elizabeth in the blue dress, by
request, though she declared it wasn't fit to be seen, occupied the
ottoman, her elbows on her knees, the firelight playing in her bright
hair.

"It is the way it happens in fairy-tales," urged the Candy Man. "And I
really couldn't help it."

"Of course you are right," she agreed. "As Virginia's story runs, 'He
turned into a prince, and because Violetta had been true to him through
thick and thin, he made her a princess.' Anyhow, Candy Man, I'm glad I
chose you before your good fortune came."

"It was an extremely venturesome thing to do, Girl of All Others, as
I have told you before, though immensely flattering to me. I have to
take the money, there is no way out of it. I believe it would break our
Miser's heart if I refused. Do you know what he was proposing to do
before he found the book?"

"What?" asked Margaret Elizabeth.

"To adopt me. You see we had come to be pretty good friends last
winter, and I think he suspected from the start that I had rather lofty
aspirations for a Candy Man. In a Little Red Chimney direction--you
understand?"

"Perfectly--go on."

"Well, he saw us in the park----"

"And his suspicions were confirmed, I suppose," put in Margaret
Elizabeth, coolly.

"Exactly. And knowing from what I had told him previously that I had
my fortune to seek, it occurred to him that as the channel he had been
hoping for had been closed, the next best thing would be to make it
possible for two young persons to----"

"The dear old Miser!" interrupted Margaret Elizabeth. "But why is he so
unwilling to use the money himself? It is honestly his."

"I may not fully understand, but I think from things he has said, that
as a boy he was jealous of my father. This feeling would naturally make
him, when it came to the test, not unwilling to believe in his guilt.
Then, being reticent and introspective, he magnified all this a
thousandfold when the truth came out, and he realised he had profited by
the unjust suspicion. By dwelling upon it he came to feel as if he had
actually obtained the money himself by unfair means. But I am convinced
that if he did encourage his uncle to believe in my father's guilt, it
was because he firmly believed it himself. Never since the facts were
known has he regarded the money as his, and not until he had almost
exhausted his own means in the effort to trace the rightful owner, as
he regarded him, did he use a penny of it."

"It is so touching to see his surprise and gratitude that I do not feel
resentful toward him," added the Candy Man. "His joy at handing over
this fortune is wonderful. He already looks a different man."

"We must make it up to him in some way," said Margaret Elizabeth. "I
mean for all these lonely years. Speaking of money, I'll tell you what
I have been thinking. When we build our house, as I suppose we shall
some day, when we come back from our search for the Archæologist----"

"By all means. That is one mitigating circumstance. We can build a
house," responded the Candy Man.

"Well, as I was going to say, we must have a Little Red Chimney. The
house will be broad and low," she extended her arms, "and with wings;
I love wings. One of them shall have a Little Red Chimney all its own.
It shall stand for our ideals. If we should be tempted to a sort of life
that separates us from our fellows, it will remind us, you, that you
once sat in a Candy Wagon, me, that I fell in love with a Candy Man. And
I'll tell you what, speaking of the Miser. Don't you remember? It was he
you meant that day when we were talking about the Fairy Godmother
Society, and----"

Of course the Candy Man remembered.

"Then, let's organise and make him chief agent while we are gone. I know
of a number of things to be done."

"So do I," said the Candy Man. "There is my fellow lodger, the one I
told you about, a teacher in the High School. He needs a real change
this summer, he and his wife."

"Oh, I am sure we can work it out," cried Margaret Elizabeth.

"I am sure we can," he assented.

"You see it will begin where organised charity leaves off, of necessity.
Also where that can't possibly penetrate, and it will be singularly
free, because secret."

"Again you sound like the minutes of the first meeting," said the Candy
Man.

"Margaret Elizabeth!"

It was Uncle Bob's voice at the door. "I hate to disturb you, but that
old bore at the club wants your father's address."

"You aren't disturbing. Come in and hear about the Fairy Godmother
Society."

"You don't mean really?" Uncle Bob stood before the hearth and looked
from his niece to the Candy Man.

"Indeed we do," she answered. "You see we have ten times as much money
as we thought we had. So why not?"

"Quite correct, as we thought we hadn't any," murmured the Candy Man.

Uncle Bob rubbed his hands in delight. "I told Prue you'd do something
of the sort; that you wouldn't just settle down to be ordinary rich
people. But Prue says riches bring caution."

Margaret Elizabeth, going to her desk for the address, laughed. "We
aren't going to forget our humble beginning," she said; "and we'll act
quickly before we are inured to our new estate."

"But then, you know, there is another side to it," her uncle interposed,
in a sudden access of prudence. "You must consider the matter carefully
with an eye to the future. For instance now, there may be heirs."

A silence fell. The fire crackled, and the clock ticked with unusual
distinctness. Then Margaret Elizabeth spoke.

"Here's the address," she said. "I'll put it in your pocket, where you
can't forget it." And as she tucked it in, she added, stoutly, with a
lovely deepening of the colour in her cheek: "If there are, Uncle Bob,
they will be fairy god-brothers and sisters, so it will be all right."

It was after the door had closed upon Uncle Bob, and Margaret Elizabeth
was back on her low seat again, that the Candy Man left his chair and
sat on the rug beside her. "Girl of All Others, is there any one else
in the world as happy as I?" he asked.

Margaret Elizabeth smiled at him with eyes that answered the question
before she spoke. Then she said, slipping her hand into his, "One
other."


THE END










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