DEAR SIR: This is to notify you that I have rented the entire
furniture of the Tutt House for the ensuing week, and am
compelled to assume possession of that in the three second floor
front rooms, as well as all the balance not in actual use by Mr.
and Mrs. Tutt and the driver of the stage. You are quite welcome,
however, to make use of the furnishings in the small room over
the kitchen. Your luggage you will find undisturbed. Regretting
any inconvenience that this transaction may cause you, I remain,
Yours respectfully,
J. BELMONT VAN KAMP.
Ralph scratched his head in amused perplexity. It devolved upon
him to even up the affair a little before his mother came back.
He must support the family reputation for resourcefulness, but it
took quite a bit of scalp irritation before he aggravated the right
idea into being. As soon as the idea came, he went in and made a
hide-bound bargain with Uncle Billy, then he went out into the hall
and waited until Evelyn came down with a huge armload of window
curtains.
“Honors are still even,” he remarked. “I have just bought all the
edibles about the place, whether in the cellar, the house or any of
the surrounding structures, in the ground, above the ground, dead
or alive, and a bargain’s a bargain as between man and man.”
“Clever of you, I’m sure,” commented Miss Van Kamp, reflectively.
Suddenly her lips parted with a smile that revealed a double row of
most beautiful teeth. He meditatively watched the curve of her lips.
“Isn’t that rather a heavy load?” he suggested. “I’d be delighted
to help you move the things, don’t you know.”
“It is quite kind of you, and what the men would call ‘‘game,’ I
believe, under the circumstances,” she answered, “but really it
will not be necessary. We have hired Mr. Tutt and the driver to do
the heavier part of the work, and the rest of it will be really a
pleasant diversion.”
“No doubt,” agreed Ralph, with an appreciative grin. “By the way,
you don’t happen to know Maud and Dorothy Partridge, of Baltimore,
do you? Stunning pretty girls, both of them, and no end of swells.”
“I know so very few people in Baltimore,” she murmured, and tripped
on down to the barn.
Ralph went out on the porch and smoked. There was nothing else that
he could do.