“It’s not—at—all—cold,” stammered Peggy, through chattering teeth, trying to make her tone of everyday courtesy like that Mr. Huntington had used.

“I just wanted to invite you to something,” she plunged bravely into her mission. “It’s a special treat to be given by our cooking class of Andrews school.”

“To invite—?” Mr. Huntington looked vaguely puzzled and alarmed. “My dear young lady,” he protested, “I haven’t been invited to anything in twenty years.” Then an understanding look came over his face. “Oh, I see,” he murmured. “How much are the tickets?”

“Oh,” cried Peggy, hurt and chagrined, “oh, there are no tickets—oh, no, that’s not the way it is at all. You see the cooking class is—awfully proud of itself and we can stand burned hands and horrid blackened dishes that we couldn’t at first. And we can get awfully good dinners, too. So we thought that instead of just getting them up at school and eating them ourselves, we’d give a series of parties around at the homes of the girls and the trustees of the school and I—I thought we’d come and give one at your house, too,” she wound up breathlessly.

The old man looked as surprised as she could have hoped.

“But there is no young girl here who goes to the school,” he said finally, “and I am not a trustee.”

And all of a sudden the explanation that Peggy had thought so complete showed itself up at its true value, nothing at all.

“N—no,” she admitted, crestfallen, “that’s so.”

The misery in her face made Mr. Huntington want to do something for her.

“If the girls of the school simply want a place to give a party—is that it?—somewhere away from the school itself, where they can be more free,—I should be distinctly terrified at the presence of so many young ladies after so long a time of solitude, but still I think I might go through with it—why not let me give them a party, if they will be so kind as to cook the things I furnish?”

Peggy’s round eyes studied Mr. Huntington’s face thoughtfully. How people hated to admit they were poor! Here he was offering to buy enough food for a dozen hungry girls when he himself had barely enough to eke out a scanty meal from one week’s end to another, according to the girls’ stories.

“Oh,—please,” she hastened to put in. “That’s part of our course, knowing what 

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