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Page 30

Peter hardly hesitated. He took off his soft hat and ran a hand
over his hair, and he straightened his tie. These preliminaries
to a proposal of marriage being disposed of, he rapped at the
door.

Anna Gates opened it. She wore a hideous red-flannel wrapper, and
in deference to Harmony a thimble. Her flat breast was stuck with
pins, and pinkish threads revealed the fact that the bathrobe was
still under way.

"Peter!" she cried. "Come in and get warm."

Harmony, in the blue kimono, gave a little gasp, and flung round
her shoulders the mass of pink on which she had been working.

"Please go out!" she said. "I am not dressed."

"You are covered," returned Anna Gates. "That's all that any sort
of clothing can do. Don't mind her, Peter, and sit on the bed.
Look out for pins!"

Peter, however, did not sit down. He stood just inside the closed
door and stared at Harmony--Harmony in the red light from the
little open door of the stove; Harmony in blue and pink and a bit
of white petticoat; Harmony with her hair over her shoulders and
tied out of her eyes with an encircling band of rosy flannel.

"Do sit!" cried Anna Gates. "You fill the room so. Bless you,
Peter, what a collar!"

No man likes to know his collar is soiled, especially on the eve
of proposing marriage to a pink and blue and white vision. Peter,
seated now on the bed, writhed.

"I rapped at Miss Wells's door," he said. "You were not there."

This last, of course, to Harmony.

Anna Gates sniffed.

"Naturally!"

"I had something to say to you. I--I dare say it is hardly
pension etiquette for you to go over to your room and let me say
it there?"

Harmony smiled above the flannel.

"Could you call it through the door?"

"Hardly."

"Fiddlesticks!" said Dr. Gates, rising. "I'll go over, of course,
but not for long. There's no fire."

With her hand on the knob, however, Harmony interfered.

"Please!" she implored. "I am not dressed and I'd rather not."
She turned to Peter. "You can say it before her, can't you?
She--I have told her all about things."

Peter hesitated. He felt ridiculous for the second time that
night. Then:--

"It was merely an idea I had. I saw a little apartment
furnished--you could learn to use the stove, unless, of course,
you don't like housekeeping--and food is really awfully cheap.
Why, at these delicatessen places and bakeshops--"

Here he paused for breath and found Dr. Gates's quizzical glance
fixed on him, and Harmony's startled eyes.

"What I am trying to say," he exploded, "is that I believe if you
would marry me it would solve some of your troubles anyhow." He
was talking for time now, against Harmony's incredulous face.
"You'd be taking on others, of course. I'm not much and I'm as
poor--well, you know. It--it was the apartment that gave me the
idea--"

"And the stove!" said Harmony; and suddenly burst into joyous
laughter. After a rather shocked instant Dr. Gates joined her. It
was real mirth with Harmony, the first laugh of days, that
curious laughter of women that is not far from tears.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Sun 21st Dec 2025, 21:06

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart