Part 2 (1/2)

Being without as yet any theories, consistently democratic, she regarded him as a friend and brother. A state of society in which the position of Candy Man was next the throne, would have seemed perfectly logical to Virginia.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIRGINIA]

”You don't look much like Tim,” she volunteered, dangling her legs from the carriage block. Her hair was dark and severely bobbed; her miniature nose was covered with freckles, and she squinted a little.

”No?” responded the Candy Man.

”Tim was Irish,” she continued.

During business hours conversation of necessity took on a disjointed character. Unless you had great power of concentration you forgot in the intervals what you had been talking about. When a group of High School boys had been served and had gone their hilarious way Virginia began again. ”You know the house with the Little Red Chimney?” she asked.

The Candy Man did.

”Well, a nice old man named Uncle Bob lives there, and I asked him why that chimney was red, and he said because it was new. A branch of a tree fell on the old one. The tree where the squirrel house is, you know.”

The Candy Man remembered the tree.

”He said the doctor was going to have it painted, but he kind of liked it red, and so did her ladys.h.i.+p.”

”And who might her ladys.h.i.+p be?” the Candy Man inquired.

”That's what I asked him, and he said, 'You come over and see,' and then he said--now listen to this, for it's just like a story.” Virginia lifted an admonis.h.i.+ng finger. ”He said, whenever I saw smoke coming out of that Little Red Chimney, I might know her ladys.h.i.+p had come to town.

You'd better believe I'm going to watch. And what do you think! I can see it from our dining-room window!” she concluded.

”Most interesting,” said the Candy Man politely, without the least idea how interesting it really was.

Virginia's gaze suddenly fastened on a small book lying on the seat of the Candy Wagon, and she had seized it before its owner could protest.

”What a funny name,” she said. ”'E p i c t e t u s.' What does that spell? And what made you cut a hole in this page? It looks like a window.”

The page was a fly leaf, from which a name, possibly that of a former owner, had been removed. Below it the Candy Man's own name was now written.

”It was so when I got it,” he answered, holding out his hand for it. He had no mind to have his book in any other keeping, for somewhere within its leaves lay a crimson flower.

Before she returned it Virginia examined the back. ”Vol. I, what does that mean?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer she tossed it back to him, and ran to join the other pigeons.

From this time Virginia began to be almost as constant a visitor as the Reporter. She had a way of bursting into conversation without any preface whatever, speaking entirely from the fullness of her heart at the moment.

”I'd give anything in the world to be pretty,” she remarked one day, resting her school bag on the carriage block and sighing deeply.

”But now honestly,” said the Candy Man, regarding her gravely, ”it seems to me you are a very nice-looking little girl, and who knows but you may turn out a great beauty some day? That is the way it happens in story books.”

Virginia returned his gaze steadily. ”Do you really think there is any chance? You are not laughing?”

He a.s.sured her he was intensely serious.

”Well, you are the first person who ever told me that. Uncle Harry said, 'Is it possible, Cornelia, that this is your child?' Cornelia is my mother, and she is a beauty. My brother is awfully good looking, too.

Everybody thinks he ought to have been the girl. I'll tell you who I want to look like when I grow up. Don't you know that young lady who fell in the mud?”