The Ellsworths were holding a family indignation meeting on the
broad porch when the Van Ramps came contentedly down for a walk,
and brushed by them with unseeing eyes.
“It makes a perfectly fascinating suite,” observed Mrs. Van Kamp,
in a pleasantly conversational tone that could be easily overheard
by anyone impolite enough to listen. “That delightful old-fashioned
fireplace in the middle apartment makes it an ideal sitting-room,
and the beds are so roomy and comfortable.”
“I just knew it would be like this!” chirruped Miss Evelyn. “I
remarked as we passed the place, if you will remember, how charming
it would be to stop in this dear, quaint old inn over night. All my
wishes seem to come true this year.”
These simple and, of course, entirely unpremeditated remarks were
as vinegar and wormwood to Mrs. Ellsworth, and she gazed after the
retreating Van Kamps with a glint in her eye that would make one
understand Lucretia Borgia at last.
Her son also gazed after the retreating Van Kamp. She had an
exquisite figure, and she carried herself with a most delectable
grace. As the party drew away from the inn she dropped behind the
elders and wandered off into a side path to gather autumn leaves.
Ralph, too, started off for a walk, but naturally not in the same
direction.
“Edward!” suddenly said Mrs. Ellsworth. “I want you to turn those
people out of that suite before night!”
“Very well,” he replied with a sigh, and got up to do it. He had
wrecked a railroad and made one, and had operated successful
corners in nutmegs and chicory. No task seemed impossible. He
walked in to see the landlord.
“What are the Van Kamps paying you for those three rooms?” he asked.
“Fifteen dollars,” Uncle Billy informed him, smoking one of Mr. Van
Kamp’s good cigars and twiddling his thumbs in huge content.
“I’ll give you thirty for them. Just set their baggage outside and
tell them the rooms are occupied.”
“No sir-ree!” rejoined Uncle Billy. “A bargain’s a bargain, an’ I
allus stick to one I make.”
Mr. Ellsworth withdrew, but not defeated. He had never supposed
that such an absurd proposition would be accepted. It was only a
feeler, and he had noticed a wince of regret in his landlord. He
sat down on the porch and lit a strong cigar. His wife did not
bother him. She gazed complacently at the flaming foliage opposite,
and allowed him to think. Getting impossible things was his
business in life, and she had confidence in him.
“I want to rent your entire house for a week,” he announced to
Uncle Billy a few minutes later. It had occurred to him that the
flood might last longer than they anticipated.
Uncle Billy’s eyes twinkled.
“I reckon it kin be did,” he allowed. “I reckon a _ho_-tel man’s
got a right to rent his hull house ary minute.”
“Of course he has. How much do you want?”
Uncle Billy had made one mistake in not asking this sort of folks
enough, and he reflected in perplexity.
“Make me a offer,” he proposed. “Ef it hain’t enough I’ll tell ye.
You want to rent th’ hull place, back lot an’ all?”
“No, just the mere house. That will be enough,” answered the other
with a smile. He was on the point of offering a hundred dollars,
when he saw the little wrinkles about Mr. Tutt’s eyes, and he said
seventy-five.
“Sho, ye’re jokin’!” retorted Uncle Billy. He had been considered a
fine horse-trader in that part of the country. “Make it a hundred
and twenty-five, an’ I’ll go ye.”
Mr. Ellsworth counted out some bills.
“Here’s a hundred,” he said. “That ought to be about right.”
“Fifteen more,” insisted Uncle Billy.
With a little frown of impatience the other counted off the extra
money and handed it over. Uncle Billy gravely handed it back.
“Them’s the fifteen dollars Mr. Kamp give me,” he explained.
“You’ve got the hull house fer a week, an’ o’ course all th’ money
that’s tooken in is your’n. You kin do as ye please about rentin’
out rooms to other folks, I reckon. A bargain’s a bargain, an’ I
allus stick to one I make.”
V
Ralph Ellsworth stalked among the trees, feverishly searching for
squirrels, scarlet leaves, and the glint of a brown walking-dress,
this last not being so easy to locate in sunlit autumn woods. Time
after time he quickened his pace, only to find that he had been
fooled by a patch of dogwood, a clump of haw bushes or even a
leaf-strewn knoll, but at last he unmistakably saw the dress, and
then he slowed down to a careless saunter.
She was reaching up for some brilliantly colored maple leaves, and
was entirely unconscious of his presence, especially after she had
seen him. Her pose showed her pretty figure to advantage, but, of
course, she did not know that. How should she?
Ralph admired the picture very much. The hat, the hair, the gown,
the dainty shoes, even the narrow strip of silken hose that was
revealed as she stood a-uptoe, were all of a deep, rich brown that
proved an exquisite foil for the pink and cream of her cheeks. He
remembered that her eyes were almost the same shade, and wondered
how it was that women-folk happened on combinations in dress that
so well set off their natural charms. The fool!
He was about three trees away, now, and a panic akin to that
which hunters describe as “buck ague” seized him. He decided that
he really had no excuse for coming any nearer. It would not do,
either, to be seen staring at her if she should happen to turn her
head, so he veered off, intending to regain the road. It would be
impossible to do this without passing directly in her range of
vision, and he did not intend to try to avoid it. He had a fine,
manly figure of his own.
He had just passed the nearest radius to her circle and was
proceeding along the tangent that he had laid out for himself, when
the unwitting maid looked carefully down and saw a tangle of roots
at her very feet. She was so unfortunate, a second later, as to
slip her foot in this very tangle and give her ankle ever so slight
a twist.
“Oh!” cried Miss Van Kamp, and Ralph Ellsworth flew to the rescue.
He had not been noticing her at all, and yet he had started to her
side before she had even cried out, which was strange. She had a
very attractive voice.
“May I be of assistance?” he anxiously inquired.
“I think not, thank you,” she replied, compressing her lips to keep
back the intolerable pain, and half-closing her eyes to show the
fine lashes. Declining the proffered help, she extricated her foot,
picked up her autumn branches, and turned away. She was intensely
averse to anything that could be construed as a flirtation, even of
the mildest, he could certainly see that. She took a step, swayed
slightly, dropped the leaves, and clutched out her hand to him.
“It is nothing,” she assured him in a moment, withdrawing the hand
after he had held it quite long enough. “Nothing whatever. I gave
my foot a slight wrench, and turned the least bit faint for a
moment.”
“You must permit me to walk back, at least to the road, with you,”
he insisted, gathering up her armload of branches. “I couldn’t
think of leaving you here alone.”
As he stooped to raise the gay woodland treasures he smiled to
himself, ever so slightly. This was not _his_ first season out,
either.
“Delightful spot, isn’t it?” he observed as they regained the road
and sauntered in the direction of the Tutt House.
“Quite so,” she reservedly answered. She had noticed that smile as
he stooped. He must be snubbed a little. It would be so good for
him.
“You don’t happen to know Billy Evans, of Boston, do you?” he asked.
“I think not. I am but very little acquainted in Boston.”
“Too bad,” he went on. “I was rather in hopes you knew Billy. All
sorts of a splendid fellow, and knows everybody.”
“Not quite, it seems,” she reminded him, and he winced at the
error. In spite of the sly smile that he had permitted to himself,
he was unusually interested.
He tried the weather, the flood, the accident, golf, books and
three good, substantial, warranted jokes, but the conversation
lagged in spite of him. Miss Van Kamp would not for the world have
it understood that this unconventional meeting, made allowable
by her wrenched ankle, could possibly fulfill the functions of a
formal introduction.
“What a ripping, queer old building that is!” he exclaimed, making
one more brave effort as they came in sight of the hotel.
“It is, rather,” she assented. “The rooms in it are as quaint and
delightful as the exterior, too.”
She looked as harmless and innocent as a basket of peaches as she
said it, and never the suspicion of a smile deepened the dimple in
the cheek toward him. The smile was glowing cheerfully away inside,
though. He could feel it, if he could not see it, and he laughed
aloud.
“Your crowd rather got the better of us there,” he admitted with
the keen appreciation of one still quite close to college days.
“Of course, the mater is furious, but I rather look on it as a
lark.”
She thawed like an April icicle.
“It’s perfectly jolly,” she laughed with him. “Awfully selfish of
us, too, I know, but such loads of fun.”
They were close to the Tutt House now, and her limp, that had
entirely disappeared as they emerged from the woods, now became
quite perceptible. There might be people looking out of the
windows, though it is hard to see why that should affect a limp.
Ralph was delighted to find that a thaw had set in, and he made one
more attempt to establish at least a proxy acquaintance.
“You don’t happen to know Peyson Kingsley, of Philadelphia, do you?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” she replied. “I know so few Philadelphia
people, you see.” She was rather regretful about it this time. He
really was a clever sort of a fellow, in spite of that smile.
The center window in the second floor of the Tutt House swung open,
its little squares of glass flashing jubilantly in the sunlight.
Mrs. Ellsworth leaned out over the sill, from the quaint old
sitting-room of the _Van Kamp apartments_!
“Oh, Ralph!” she called in her most dulcet tones. “Kindly excuse
yourself and come right on up to our suite for a few moments!”