The mutual siege lasted until after seven o’clock, but it was
rather one-sided. The Van Kamps could drink all the water they
liked, it made them no hungrier. If the Ellsworths ate anything,
however, they grew thirstier, and, moreover, water was necessary
if anything worth while was to be cooked. They knew all this,
and resisted until Mrs. Ellsworth was tempted and fell. She ate
a sandwich and choked. It was heartbreaking, but Ralph had to be
sent down with a plate of sandwiches and an offer to trade them for
water.
Halfway between the pump and the house he met Evelyn coming with a
small pail of the precious fluid. They both stopped stock still;
then, seeing that it was too late to retreat, both laughed and
advanced.
“Who wins now?” bantered Ralph as they made the exchange.
“It looks to me like a misdeal,” she gaily replied, and was moving
away when he called her back.
“You don’t happen to know the Gately’s, of New York, do you?” he
was quite anxious to know.
“I am truly sorry, but I am acquainted with so few people in New
York. We are from Chicago, you know.”
“Oh,” said he blankly, and took the water up to the Ellsworth suite.
Mrs. Ellsworth cheered up considerably when she heard that Ralph
had been met half-way, but her eyes snapped when he confessed that
it was Miss Van Kamp who had met him.
“I hope you are not going to carry on a flirtation with that
overdressed creature,” she blazed.
“Why mother,” exclaimed Ralph, shocked beyond measure. “What right
have you to accuse either this young lady or myself of flirting?
Flirting!”
Mrs. Ellsworth suddenly attacked the fire with quite unnecessary
energy.
X
Down at the barn, the wide threshing floor had been covered with
gay rag-rugs, and strewn with tables, couches, and chairs in
picturesque profusion. Roomy box-stalls had been carpeted deep with
clean straw, curtained off with gaudy bed-quilts, and converted
into cozy sleeping apartments. The mow and the stalls had been
screened off with lace curtains and blazing counterpanes, and the
whole effect was one of Oriental luxury and splendor. Alas, it
was only an “effect”! The red-hot parlor stove smoked abominably,
the pipe carried other smoke out through the hawmow window, only
to let it blow back again. Chill cross-draughts whistled in from
cracks too numerous to be stopped up, and the miserable Van Kamps
could only cough and shiver, and envy the Tutts and the driver,
non-combatants who had been fed two hours before.
Up in the second floor suite there was a roaring fire in the big
fireplace, but there was a chill in the room that no mere fire
could drive away—the chill of absolute emptiness.
A man can outlive hardships that would kill a woman, but a woman
can endure discomforts that would drive a man crazy.
Mr. Ellsworth went out to hunt up Uncle Billy, with an especial
solace in mind. The landlord was not in the house, but the yellow
gleam of a lantern revealed his presence in the woodshed, and Mr.
Ellsworth stepped in upon him just as he was pouring something
yellow and clear into a tumbler from a big jug that he had just
taken from under the flooring.
“How much do you want for that jug and its contents?” he asked,
with a sigh of gratitude that this supply had been overlooked.
Before Mr. Tutt could answer, Mr. Van Kamp hurried in at the door.
“Wait a moment!” he cried. “I want to bid on that!”
“This here jug hain’t fer sale at no price,” Uncle Billy
emphatically announced, nipping all negotiations right in the bud.
“It’s too pesky hard to sneak this here licker in past Marge’t, but
I reckon it’s my treat, gents. Ye kin have all ye want.”
One minute later Mr. Van Kamp and Mr. Ellsworth were seated, one
on a sawbuck and the other on a nail-keg, comfortably eyeing each
other across the work bench, and each was holding up a tumbler
one-third filled with the golden yellow liquid.
“Your health, sir,” courteously proposed Mr. Ellsworth.
“And to you, sir,” gravely replied Mr. Van Kamp.