Chapter 5: Marie Speaks Her Mind

Billy with John and Peggy met Marie Hawthorn at the station. “Peggy” was short for “Pegasus,” and was what Billy always called her luxurious, seven-seated touring car.

“I simply won’t call it ‘automobile,’” she had declared when she bought it. “In the first place, it takes too long to say it, and in the second place, I don’t want to add one more to the nineteen different ways to pronounce it that I hear all around me every day now. As for calling it my ‘car,’ or my ‘motor car’—I should expect to see a Pullman or one of those huge black trucks before my door, if I ordered it by either of those names. Neither will I insult the beautiful thing by calling it a ‘machine.’ Its name is Pegasus. I shall call it ‘Peggy.’”

And “Peggy” she called it. John sniffed his disdain, and Billy’s friends made no secret of their amused tolerance; but, in an astonishingly short time, half the automobile owners of her acquaintance were calling their own cars “Peggy”; and even the dignified John himself was heard to order “some gasoline for Peggy,” quite as a matter of course.

When Marie Hawthorn stepped from the train at the North Station she greeted Billy with affectionate warmth, though at once her blue eyes swept the space beyond expectantly and eagerly.

Billy’s lips curved in a mischievous smile.

“No, he didn’t come,” she said. “He didn’t want to—a little bit.”

Marie grew actually pale.

“Didn’t want to!” she stammered.

Billy gave her a spasmodic hug.

“Goosey! No, he didn’t—a little bit; but he did a great big bit. As if you didn’t know he was dying to come, Marie! But he simply couldn’t—something about his concert Monday night. He told me over the telephone; but between his joy that you were coming, and his rage that he couldn’t see you the first minute you did come, I couldn’t quite make out what was the trouble. But he’s coming to dinner to-night, so he’ll doubtless tell you all about it.”