an olive half-way to her mouth.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“He’s very poor, you know,” said Florence.

“Too poor to buy coffee?—I should think somebody in the town—”

“Oh, my dear,” interrupted one of the other girls, “scared to death! Nobody’d think of offering to do anything for him. He’s the proudest man in the world. He used to own most of this town, but everything has drifted away from him. He never goes anywhere—nobody ever sees him. He wouldn’t want to see anyone. He telephones to the grocery for just a few things once in a while, and that’s how he gets along. Why, Peggy, you look so funny.”

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

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

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

“I’d have made him some coffee,” she said at last, her crooked dimple flickering into view for just an instant.

“No, you wouldn’t,” denied Florence Thomas, “nobody has been in that house to do anything as daring as that for years. There’s a mystery about it, I tell you—and, in spite of story books, nobody likes to probe too deeply into mysteries. Some people even say that a relative of Mr. Huntington’s stole all his money from him and that’s why he has to live so poorly. Yes, there are lots of stories—”

Peggy brushed the crumbs out of her lap serenely.

“How silly,” she said, “as if anybody’s stealing from the poor old man were reason enough why all the rest of the townspeople should stay away from him and leave him poor,” she said. “What has that to do with my making him some coffee? Even if he’d been the one who 

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