Oh, then, he didn't mind having folks know, after all. Peggy winced at the open way he spoke of it now, after all her efforts to conceal the fact that she knew his poverty.
"Oh," she said uncomfortably, "you're not _very_ poor. I'm poor, too. My aunt sends me to school, but when I am graduated I'm going to earn my own living!" She shot it out at him, all breathless to see the effect of so astounding a piece of news. Something at once so tragic and so thrilling.
"You are?" queried the old man absently. "Well, I sometimes think those are the happiest days of a person's life--the days of piling up their fortune--"
"Of--of--my goodness!" gasped Peggy. "_I'm_ not dreaming of piling up a fortune. What could I do that would be worth very much? I'm going to--I'm going--to--"
"I might teach something--they say I'm good in English, or I might--why I might _cook_. Wait until you've tried this dinner I want to get up for you and then maybe you can recommend me for a position as cook sometime--oh, now you see you _must_ let us have the dinner."
"I see it now, of course," smiled Mr. Huntington. And then a look of real eagerness came over his lonely face. "What day had you--thought of for the festivities?" he asked.
"Oh," began Peggy thoughtfully, "there are lots of good days for it--any Sunday or--"
Mr. Huntington murmured something, she wasn't quite sure what. She paused inquiringly. She mustn't let him know she suggested Sunday, because of its being a proverbially lonely day for people without family or friends, and if he had a different choice--
"Thanksgiving," he was saying slowly to himself, so low that Peggy could hardly hear him. "Thanksgiving always is a--hard day to get through."
"Hard! Why, it's gorgeous! Oh, if we only can get our ice-box principal to let us, I'm sure the girls would _love_ to give the dinner on Thanksgiving. It will give us an opportunity to learn how to fix turkey and cranberry and all those things. We will settle that, then, because I'll tease my head off when I'm talking to Mrs. Forest--I'll even kiss her if I have to, and in the end she'll say 'Bless you, my children, go and give your party.'"
"And I shall say bless you, too, I shouldn't wonder," murmured the old man, with a hint of a smile in his eyes. "It's been eighteen years since Thanksgiving meant anything in this house. My daughter was here then, with her husband and baby son. But--"