Mr. Langham was at the float to welcome the two Carolinians.
"You have," he complimented Colonel Meredith, "once more proved the
ability to land on your feet in a soft spot. You will be more
comfortable here, better fed, better laundered than anywhere else in the
world."
As they strolled from the float to the office, Mr. Jonstone looked about
him a little uneasily. Not one of the beautiful girls who had looked
into his eyes from the page of _The Four Seasons_ was in sight, or,
indeed, any girl, woman, or female of any sort whatever. He had led
himself to expect a resort crowded with rustling and starchy boarders.
He found himself, instead, in a primeval pine forest in which were
sheltered many low, austere buildings of logs, above whose great
chimneys stood vertical columns of pale smoke. It was not yet dusk, but
the air among the long shadows had an icy quality and was heavily
charged with the odor of balsam. It was difficult to believe the season
summer, and Mr. Jonstone was reminded of December evenings in the
Carolinas.
"This is the office," said Mr. Langham, and he ushered them into the
presence of a bright birch fire and Maud Darling. Each of the
Carolinians drew a quick breath and bowed as if before royalty. Mr.
Langham presented them to Miss Darling. She begged them to write their
names in the guest book and to warm themselves at the fire.
"And then," said Sam Langham, "I'll shake them up a cocktail and show
them their house."
"Are we to have a whole house to ourselves?" asked Colonel Meredith. He
had not yet taken his eyes from Maud Darling's face.
"It's only two rooms: bath, parlor, and piazza," she explained.
"That last?" asked Mr. Jonstone.
"It's the same thing as a 'poach,'" explained Mr. Langham with a sly
twinkle in his eyes.
"It's to sit on and enjoy the view from," added Maud.
"But I don't want to admire the view," complained Colonel Meredith. "I
want to lounge about the office. It's the prerogative of every American
citizen to lounge about the office of his hotel."
Colonel Meredith had yet to take his eyes from Maud Darling's face. And
it was with protest written all over it that he at length followed his
cousin and Mr. Langham into the open air.
The three were presently sampling a cocktail of the latter's shaking in
the latter's snug little house, and speech was loosened in their mouths.
"Darling, _père_," explained Sam Langham, "went broke. He used to run
this place as it is run now, with this difference: that in the old days
he put up the money, while now it is the guests who pay. Two years ago
the Miss Darling you just met was one of the greatest heiresses in
America; now she keeps books and makes out bills."
"And are there truly five others equally lovely?" asked Colonel
Meredith.
"Some people think that the oldest of the six is also the loveliest,"
said Sam Langham, loyal to the choice of his own heart. "But they are
all very lovely."
To the Carolinians, warmed by Langham's cocktail, it seemed pitiful that
six beautiful girls who had had so much should now have so little. And
with a little encouragement they would have been moved to the expression
of exaggerated sentiments. It was Maud, however, and not the others,
who had aroused these feelings in their breasts. The desire to benefit
her by some secret action--and then to be found out--was very strong in
them both.
Langham left them after a time and they began to dress for dinner.
Usually they had a great deal to say to each other; often they disputed
and were gorgeously insolent to each other about the most trifling
things, but on the present occasion their one desire was to dress as
rapidly as possible and to visit the office upon some pretext or other.
When Colonel Meredith from the engulfment of a starched shirt announced
that he had several letters to write and wondered where one could buy
postage-stamps, it afforded Bob Jonstone malicious satisfaction to
inform him that the "little drawer in their writing-table contained not
only plenty of twos but fives and a strip of special deliveries."
"All I have to think about," said he, "is my laundry. I suppose they can
tell me at the office."
"_They?_" exclaimed Colonel Meredith.
As he spoke the collar button sprang like a slippery cherry-stone from
between his thumb and forefinger, fell in the exact middle of the room
in a perfectly bare place, and disappeared. Up to this moment the
cousins had remained on even terms in the race to be dressed first. But
now Mr. Jonstone gained and, before the collar button was found, had
given a parting "slick" to his hair and gone out.
It was now dark, and the woodland streets of The Camp were lighted by
lanterns. Windows were bright-yellow rectangles. A wind had risen and
the lake could be heard slapping against the rocky shore.
Maud Darling had left the office long enough to change from tailor-made
tweeds to the simplest white muslin. She was adding up a column in a fat
book. She looked golden in the firelight and the lamplight, and
resembled some heavenly being but for the fact that, for the moment, she
was puzzled to discover the sum of seven and five and was biting the end
of her pencil. The divine muse of Inspiration lives in the "other" ends
of pens and pencils. The world owes many of its masterpieces of
literature and invention to reflective nibbling at these instruments,
and if I were a teacher I should think twice before I told my pupils to
take their pencils out of their mouths.
Mr. Jonstone knocked on the open door of the office.
"This is the office," said Miss Maud Darling; "you don't have to knock.
Is anything not right?"
"Everything is absolutely perfect," bowed Mr. Jonstone. "But you are
busy. I could come again. I only wanted to ask about sending some things
to a laundry."
"You're not supposed to think about that," said Maud. "There is a
clothes-bag in the big closet in your bedroom and my sister Eve does the
rest."
"Oh, but I couldn't allow----"
"Not with her own hands, of course; she merely oversees the laundry and
keeps it up to the mark. But if you like your things to be done in any
special way you must see her and explain."
"In my home," said Jonstone, "my old mammy does all the washing and most
everything else, and I wouldn't dare to find fault. She would follow me
up-stairs and down scolding all the time if I did. You see, though she
isn't a slave any more, she's never had any wages, and so she takes it
out in privileges and prerogatives."
"No wages ever since the Civil War!" exclaimed Maud.
"We had to have servants," he explained, "and until the other day there
was never any money to pay them with. We had nothing but the plantation
and the family silver."
"And of course you couldn't part with that. In the North when we get
hard up we sell anything we've got. But in the South you don't, and I've
always admired that trait in you beyond measure."
"In that case," said Mr. Jonstone, turning a little pale, "it is my duty
to tell you that the other day I parted with my silver in exchange for a
large sum of money. I made up my mind that I had only one life to live
and that I was sick of being poor."
Maud smiled.
"If you want to keep your ill-gotten gains," she said, "you ought never
to have come to this place. Wasn't there some kind friend to tell you
that our prices are absolutely prohibitive? We haven't gone into
business for fun but with the intention of making money hand over fist.
It's only fair to warn you."
She imagined that, at the outside, he might have received a couple of
thousand dollars for his family silver, and it seemed wicked that he
should be allowed to part with this little capital for food, lodging,
and a little trout-fishing.
"My silver," he said, "turned out to be worth a lot of money, and I have
put it all in trust for myself, so that my wife and children shall never
want."
A flicker of disappointment appeared in Maud Darling's eyes.
"But I didn't know you were married," she said lamely.
"Oh, I'm not--yet!" he exclaimed joyfully. "But I mean to be."
"Engaged?" she asked.
"Hope to be--mean to be," he confessed.
And at this moment Colonel Melville Meredith came in out of the night.
Having bowed very low to Miss Darling, he turned to his cousin.
"Did Langham find you?" he asked.
"No."
"Well, he's a-waiting at our house. I said I thought you'd be right
back."
"Then we--" began Jonstone.
"Not we--_you_," said his cousin, malice in his eyes. "I want to ask
Miss Darling some questions about telegrams and special messages by
telephone."
Bob Jonstone withdrew himself with the utmost reluctance.
"We have a telephone that connects us with the telegraph office at
Carrytown," Maud began, but Colonel Meredith interrupted almost rudely.
"We engaged our rooms for ten days only," he said, "but I want to keep
them for the rest of the summer. Please don't tell me that they are
promised to some one else."
"But they are," said she; "I'm very sorry."
"Can't you possibly keep us?"
She shook her fine head less in negation than reflection.
"I don't see how," she said finally, "unless some one gives out at the
last minute. There are just so many rooms and just so many applicants."
"How long," he asked, "would it take to build a little house for my
cousin and me?"
"If we got all the carpenters from Carrytown," said Maud, "it could be
done very quickly. But----"
"Now you are going to make some other objection!"
"I was only going to say that if you wanted to go camping for a few
weeks, we could supply you with everything needful. We have first-rate
tents for just that sort of thing."
"But we don't want to go camping. We want to stay here."
"Exactly. There is no reason why you shouldn't pitch your tent in the
main street of this camp and live in it."
"That's just what we'll do," said Colonel Meredith, "and to-morrow we'll
pick out the site for the tent--if you'll help us."