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

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.

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."

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