It was inexplicable that as Margaret Elizabeth gazed up at the general the eyes beneath the stern brows should become the eyes of the Candy Man.  But her exasperation at this absurd illusion passed quickly into horrified embarrassment, when Virginia, edging toward the master of the house, asked explosively, “Say, have you really got a room full of gold?”

“There is one thing certain, you can never go there with me again,” said Miss Bentley, on their way across the street.

“But Aleck said——­” began the culprit.

“Never mind what he said.  Aleck is a very ignorant little boy.  People don’t keep gold in rooms.  If they have it they put it in the bank or send it to the mint.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

In which the Miser’s past history is touched upon; which shows how his solitude is again invaded, and how he makes a new friend.

“There isn’t any mystery about him, so far as I know,” said the Reporter, who was seated as usual upon the carriage block.  The Candy Wagon continued to act as a magnet for him, and in season and out his genial presence confronted the Candy Man.

If his emphasis upon the pronoun was noticed, it was ignored.  The mystery was, the Candy Man replied, how with such a face he could be a miser.

“Oh, he’s a bit nutty, of course.  My grandmother says his money came to him unexpectedly and the shock was too much for him.  They say he has a notion he is holding it in trust.  He is rational enough in every other way, a shrewd investor, in fact.  His uncle, General Waite, who left him the money, was a connection of my grandmother’s.”

“The Miser is a cousin then?”

“Not on your tintype, my friend.  Old Knight was a nephew of the general’s wife, you see.”

“And there were no other heirs?” asked the Candy Man.

“There was an own nephew, I have heard, who mysteriously disappeared shortly before the general’s death.  I have heard my grandmother mention it, but it was long before my day.  Why are you interested?”

Even to himself the Candy Man could not quite explain his interest in this sad and lonely man, except that, as he had told Miss Bentley in their first and only conversation, he had a habit of getting interested in people.  For example, in the house where he roomed there was a young couple who just now engaged his sympathies.  The husband, a teacher in the Boys’ High School, had been ill with typhoid, and the little wife’s anxious face haunted the Candy Man.  The husband was recovering, but of course the long illness had overtaxed their small resources, and—­But, oh dear! weren’t there hundreds of such cases?  What was the good of thinking about it!  Yet suppose there were a Fairy Godmother Society?

The Candy Man was a foolish dreamer, and his favourite dream in these days was of some time sitting beside the Little Red Chimney hearth, and discussing the Fairy Godmother Society with Miss Bentley.  These bright dreams, however, were interspersed by moments of extreme depression, in which he cursed the day upon which he had become a Candy Man; moments when the horrified surprise in the eyes of Miss Bentley as she recognised him, rose up to torment him.