"So?" said Mrs. Forest in rather pleased surprise. "Well, I never thought he cared about meeting anybody--did he say anything like that, really?"
"Say?--why, he wants us to go there for Thanksgiving dinner!" cried Peggy rapturously. "You and me and the whole school!"
The utter strangeness of any such desire on Mr. Huntington's part,--its incredible suddenness--was already beginning to fade out in Mrs. Forest's practical mind before the economic advantages such an invitation offered. Times were hard that year, and while she liked the girls to be wonderfully well satisfied with the holiday dinners at the school, nevertheless turkey, cranberries, pies, almonds ran expenses up greatly. In one stupendous jumble the necessary preparations had been oppressing her mind now for several days, and all the scratch pads on her desk were covered with scrawling figures indicating the amount of money it would take to put so elaborate a dinner through.
If anybody in the town was so markedly peculiar as to invite a whole school to Thanksgiving dinner, she felt an immediate inclination to take advantage of it.
Around the table as Peggy had finished speaking, and while Mrs. Forest toyed with her salad, went a barely audible chorus of groans from the girls. How could Peggy do such a short-sighted thing as to include their principal in the plan? She knew as well as anyone that her presence would spoil everything. In their hearts they had known that some one of the teachers would have to go along with them even if the impossible came true and they were allowed to give the party. But they had hoped it would be Miss Carrol, and that Mrs. Forest would be safely shaken off with her blightingly rigid ideas of discipline for at least that one day. Now Peggy had hopelessly gotten them into having her if they went at all. Peggy pretended not to notice their unhappy glances in her direction.
"That's very kind of your friend," Mrs. Forest was saying in a sugary voice. "I'm sure the school ought to feel honored at an invitation to Huntington House--"
"_Gloomy_ house," whispered Florence Thomas, who was sitting on the other side of Peggy.
Mrs. Forest frowned slightly. "To Huntington House," she repeated mouthingly. "It used to be the center of all the social activities in the town a long time ago. But after the fortune went--and the daughter and her family went away--"