The All-Story, March 1914 — page 147: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

620 He laughed softly and rather sadly. * ‘Talking to you seems like rehashing things with her ghost.” Peggy did not know where to look. Somehow, she could not be dignified or indignant with him, or feel that it was at all funny. There was some- thing insidiously attractive about the situation—romance, adventure, and a haunting, pleasing possibility that, be- cause it was not very distinct, was all the more alluring. “ Its—it’s queer, isn’t it?” arded timidly. “Queer! It's uncanny. I can’t be- lieve, even now, that you are not—” “Tm not.” “ But you will, won't you?” " What ?* She knew very well what he meant, but she wanted him to repeat it. * Sit upon the other side of a din- ner-table? It’s unorthodox and _ all that, but, just once—and then I'll drift and never bother you again. I sup- pose I’m a_ fool,” he finished dully. “T don't—I mean—” “ Ninety-Sixth Street. Change for West Farms and Bronx Park!” Peggy started to her feet and the _stranger did likewise. “ Please!” he whispered. once,” The girl looked up at him a little fearfully, fecling that he must be very serious and that she was more sorry for him than was comfortable. “Just once?” she asked very low and over her shoulder as she moved toward the door. “Just once,” he returned solemnly, “Tt would be an act of charity.” Peggy laughed—a sound that defied convention, and she experienced some- thing of the thrill of the explorer who plunges into unknown lands with fate leading the way. A few minutes later, as she squeezed into a crowded local train, she realized that she had made an appointment with Mr. Everard Fairleigh, who had given her his card, and, leaving him stand- ing on the platform, waiting for the she haz- Just THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. next Broadway train, she carried with. her to Mrs. Telfer’s boarding-house on One Hundred and Twenty-Fourth - Street a persistent memory of the sad-— ness that was in Mr. Fairleigh’s hand-. some tace. | In Mrs. Telfer’s the ‘‘ comforts of ; ‘a home” were dispensed, so far as Peggy was concerned, at six dollars per week. She had a very small room ‘ at the top of the somber, brownstone: house, and was one of a company of | four occupying the lowest rung in the. ladder of Mrs. Telfer’s esteem. Two indifferently paid clerks shared the “ top floor front ”; Peggy had the. cubby-hole at the top of the stairs, and in a slightly larger room adjoining there lived a Miss Grayson, who was considered “ a little queer in the head.” She was a few years older than. Peggy, with a shifting something in. her attractive face that spoke of a mind. constantly troubled, but no one knew very much about her, except that she was a milliner with strange notions about life and a horror of ferry-boats. Peggy did not eat much dinner that : evening. She was too excited. Some- thing had happened to her; something deliciously different from anything she had ever experienced before, and the little sensation of guilt she had only made everything so much more inter-— esting. In the two days that followed she dreamed dreams, and though her cheeks burned sometimes in response to certain wild hopes she had, she scarcely ever questioned the right or wrong of it. Mrs. Telfer’s boarding-house became more and more somber, till she “ hated the place.” Her “ grouchy” employer seemed more disagreeable every min- ute, and once she caught herself whis- pering the consolation that she would not have to “ suffer it much longer.” The haunting, alluring possibility that had had birth in the subway be- came very distinct, and at night she lay awake, painting pictures that were truly entrancing. eomiclbooks.c©