THE SNOW-STORM AT ROSEDALE
“You haven’t seen the country yet; we will take a run for the hills,”
he said when he had picked her up. “I might have brought my little
racer, but this machine is more dignified. Besides, with the tonneau
curtains drawn we look like a large party.”
They rode in silence at first but their spirits rose with the rapid
flight and the joy of freedom. They skirted Stanwixley and were soon
speeding over the hills. She wore a pretty fur toque and when the wind
began to whip her free hair, he begged her not to tie on the veil she
had brought, lest it spoil the jaunty effect of the cap, in which, he
assured her, she looked only seventeen. Their flight into the open took
colour from this thought of their youth, dancing alluringly before them
over unreckoned miles to a goal where all was possible and all unknown.
It had been unseasonably warm at noon, but the wind blew more coldly as
the afternoon advanced. Dark clouds were massing in the West; the storm
spirit, having ranged the plains and prairies of the farther West, was
now preparing to pile its snow in the Appalachian valleys.
“How would a snow-storm strike you? We’re likely to catch one before
the day’s over.”
They were climbing a hill and as the heavy machine gained the windy top
and a long, clear stretch of highway spread before them he looked at
her and asked:
“This road leads round the world--why should we ever go back?”
“Because we are not utterly silly, and we are not going to lose our
minds, I hope.” But she laughed, as much as to say that nothing really
mattered. “I’m hungry. It seems to me you promised sandwiches. If you
did, I’m dying for food; if you didn’t bring them, then I’m not hungry!”
“I like your philosophy. You’d be a good girl to seek the happy isles
with--you wouldn’t cry if you got your feet wet, or were lost on a
desert island, or anything like that.”
“I hope not--but you never can tell. I mustn’t get the crying
habit--nothing ages one so fast.”
“I think we’d better turn round unless we really expect to be gone
forever--I’m willing if you are. As to the sandwiches, I have a little
surprise in store for you. It’s too cold to picnic out-of-doors--how
would a fire and something hot strike you?”
“Tea--most delightful of thoughts! But these farmhouses don’t look
inviting.”
“That’s where the surprise comes in. We’ll run into the Rosedale
Country Club and maybe we can get a fire to take the chill off before
we go home. You’ve never seen Rosedale; it’s the best thing we do in
country clubs.”
They were soon speeding over a private road that led through a heavy
woodland, skirting a ravine. The woodland yielded at once to a golf
course at their left, stretching across a gray upland. Its targets
suggested the lost banners of a deserted battlefield, and a long bunker
midway of the slope the desolate grave of defeated battalions. They
climbed a hill with the vale deepening at their right hand and an
abrupt turn brought the club-house into view, its white-pillared façade
greeting the eye with suggestions of domestic taste and comfort. A man
appeared instantly as though he were expecting them, and flung open the
door of a large lounging room where a great log fire crackled cheerily.
A table had been set for two directly before the hearth, and while
they were throwing off their wraps the man brought a tea tray with
sandwiches and cakes.
“You see,” said Wayne, rubbing his hands before the flames, “all the
comforts of home were to be had for the trouble of a telephone message.
Ah, look at that!”
A snow-storm had sprung into being without the snow’s usual tentative
experiments, and the wind was driving a feathery cloud across the
landscape. At the ravine’s edge below the veranda a few scarlet leaves
clung bravely to the sumac bushes, their colour flaming in the whirling
snow. Mrs. Craighill turned with a contented little sigh from the
windows to the room’s comfort and cheer. Their adventure, too, gained
fresh quality from the sense of security communicated by the handsome
room. Rosedale was a small and exclusive organization which, even at
its busiest season, gave its members almost the seclusion of a private
house. Mrs. Craighill left the fire to inspect some of the etchings on
the walls and came back to the seat Wayne placed for her at the table,
shivering from her plunge into the arctic circle that lay beyond the
reach of the fire.
“There doesn’t seem to be anybody else here; is it really all our very
own?”
“Do you want me to answer yes or no?” he laughed. “You saw the
caretaker; he’s always here and he has a wife around somewhere. We are
chaperoned, if that’s what you mean.”
“But other people might come at any time. Do you think anybody else is
as perfectly deliciously crazy as we are?”
She surveyed the table with satisfaction and began filling the tea-pot
from the kettle that hummed over the alcohol flames.
“Well, if anyone comes we won’t let them in--that’s all! Possession is
ten points of the law in this case. I thought of it first and anybody
else will be treated as an intruder.”
“But at the rate it’s snowing we may never get home!”
“Well,” he said, nibbling a sandwich, “why should we?”
“There is that question, of course! You will have tea, won’t you?”
The man now brought cups of hot bouillon which, Mrs. Craighill
declared, lifted their luncheon out of the plane of commonplace teas
into the realm of banquets.
“Will you have something to drink, sir?” asked the servant.
Wayne glanced quickly at Mrs. Craighill.
“You can have champagne, buttermilk--anything. The cellar is excellent.
I stocked it myself.”
“No; we will have nothing,” she answered with decision, and when they
had dismissed the man, Wayne looked at her and smiled as he stirred his
tea.
“I haven’t tasted a drop since you came. Do you know why?”
“No; I really haven’t an idea,” she replied with an assumption of
careless interest. She knew what he wished to say; she entertained no
delusions as to his sincerity; but she wished him to say it. There was
tenderness in his manner and tone as he bent toward her.
“I did it for you, Addie. It was because you came back into my life. I
had been going a wicked gait; in another year I should have been all
in. But the night father showed me your picture and I knew it was you
he was going to marry, I made a resolution never to drink again. I have
been doing pretty well, haven’t I?”
“It has been fine of you; I appreciate it; I thank you for it.”
“I realized perfectly why it was that you were coming--why you were
going to marry my father. I had known that there must come a time when
your relations with your mother would become intolerable. I knew that
you had to escape from her. If you had to be sacrificed I was glad
chance was sending you my way that I might make it all easier for you.
Your plight--the thought of a girl like you being hawked about--was
hideous. I ought to have seen that, that summer we first knew each
other; but I punished myself and I hope you felt it too, when I thought
it was your mother that I was revenging myself on. And now, Addie,” he
concluded spaciously, “I want you to be happy.”
“You are a dear boy,” she murmured.
She did not interrupt him with the hundred questions that thronged
into her mind. He was giving his own twist to the facts of their
earlier relationship and his own escape from her mother’s net; but she
correctly surmised that he was deceiving himself and she was in a mood
to aid and abet deception. She had drunk her tea and rested her arms on
the table, urging him on with her eyes. The flame had warmed her cheeks
to a bright colour and was finding and brightening the bronze in her
hair.
“You deserve the best; you have a right to happiness,” he went on. “I
mean to stand between you and unhappiness.”
“You are very good to me, Wayne!”
He placed his hand lightly on hers that lay near--and removed it
instantly, afraid to risk too much. “That first afternoon, when I went
home just to see you, it was because my old feeling for you had risen
in me strong at the sight of you again. When you begged me to let you
alone that day, I obeyed you. You had come with fine ideals of your
duty and an ambition to fill your place in my father’s house worthily.
You wanted to live up to his own dignity. I saw all that.”
She nodded her head once or twice at the soothing combination of praise
and sympathy. She waited for what further he had to say with confidence
that it would be agreeable to hear. It was apparent that he had
deliberately made this opportunity; he had planned their ride with this
bright, glowing hearth as its goal; and she experienced the pleasurable
sense of being a figure in a little drama, herself its chief character,
with a setting of the stage at once adequate and satisfying.
He had always been plausible with women and he was playing the
situation for what it was worth. He could almost believe in his own
sincerity. He was conscious that he was managing the affair well;
he even enjoyed his own speeches which he uttered so glibly that he
wondered at his fluency.
“The appeal you made to me that first afternoon did you credit; it was
like you. A man of iron could not have failed to be touched by what
you said to me. I knew as no one else in town ever could know what you
were trying to escape, and how you had set up my father as a splendid
big god to worship. He was to be your strength and your refuge, and
you were horror-struck at the thought of our going back to our old
basis. I wanted to make love to you and you would not have it. I felt
the scorn you heaped on me--it burned me like hot coals, but I waited;
I waited because I knew the time would come when you would want and
need me. I knew how it would be because I, too, had knelt before the
same glittering god. I’m going to be honest about all this: at first I
thought it was your mother who had cheated him, and I was glad of it;
then I saw that it was the other way around--that you had been deceived
and cheated, and that you would have to pay for it. When I saw that
that was the way of it, and that you were trusting him to end your long
campaign against the world, my sympathy went out to you, and all my
old feeling for you came back. You were never so precious to me as you
are to-day--no one ever meant to me what you mean. You are dear to me,
dearer and more precious than any words can tell you, Addie.”
He had spoken rapidly, in a low vibrant voice. She made no reply, but
turned her head slightly away; but when he again touched her hand she
suffered him to hold it; it slipped into his palm and rested there at
the table’s edge.
“I understood that whole matter of your changed decision about going
to Boston. It was so perfectly plain that it was funny. Father didn’t
want you to go to the Brodericks. To put it plainly, he’s the rankest
kind of snob. He was a little bit afraid you weren’t quite up to their
level. He had been crazy for years to be invited there, and the chance
was not to be missed. He would have thrown over my own mother in the
same fashion if he had played at being a great reformer in her day. I
remember, when I was a child, that Fanny and I used to play with two
dolls we called king and queen, and we sat them up on a throne and
worshipped them; but the king sprang a leak one day and the sawdust
came out and that was the end of the king business for me. I was about
fifteen when I began to find out that father was stuffed with sawdust.
It came about from his title of Colonel. A lot of us boys were bragging
one day about what our fathers had done in the Civil War and I had
silenced the other youngsters by announcing that my father was so brave
that he had been made a colonel, and one of the others came back at
me the next day with news he had got at home that my father had never
been in the war at all--and it was true! And all this philanthropic
work and these meetings he addresses so beautifully--it all comes of
the cheapest kind of vanity. It isn’t the thing itself he’s interested
in; it’s his own name in the newspapers, the glory of his after-dinner
speeches at the Waldorf, and quiet committee meetings at Old Point
Comfort about the time the shad are beginning to run, and when it’s
nice and comfortable to meet the spring down there, and issue open
letters to presidents and governors about any old thing, just so it’s
far enough away from home. When they come round and ask father to go
in for reform in Pittsburg he can’t hear them talking; he sympathizes
with the work, and is annoyed when the muck-raker writes us up, but
press of other affairs prevents him, and so forth. The fact is that
he’s a coward when it comes to getting out on the firing line to be
shot at. He wants the Indians in Wyoming to be protected and the Negro
to be educated, but he’s afraid to go up against the gang at home. With
cowardice and vanity as the chief elements of his character--bah! you
see it all--you don’t need to go into the case any deeper. You thought
you were solving all your problems by marrying a fine, chivalrous
gentleman, respected and admired by all the world, but you have already
got a taste of his real character. He’s begun to leak sawdust. He likes
you because you are pretty and gentle and biddable, but chiefly because
you listen so charmingly when he talks!”
“Wayne, Wayne, you don’t know what you are saying!”
“Yes, I know what I am saying. And I know it is blackguardly for a man
like me, who has led an evil life and never done a decent thing--who
has been a disgrace to his honoured father and to the city he was
born in, to be talking so; and I’m only saying it to you because you
have already found it out--because we’ve both got to suffer from it.
Don’t imagine I’m one of those sickly asses who are always snivelling
because they’re misunderstood. I’m a bad lot and everybody knows it.
I’ve been understood all right enough. Fanny tried to keep me in social
countenance by sticking me down the throats of the people she knows and
sees in her own house; but I’m so rotten they won’t have it. The women
that have to speak to me in her parlour cut me on the street. Because
I was born with wild red blood in me and didn’t settle down into being
a fraud like himself, father took that martyr-like tone about me with
all his friends. I can hear him now mentioning me to the Brodericks and
sighing softly and shaking his head dolefully to get their sympathy.
You can be dead sure the Brodericks know about me; the last time I
was in Boston I tore up a few trees on the common and all the papers
printed our illustrious name in big red type.”
He laughed a little wildly, for he had ceased to be a lover and was a
man with a grievance and in his bitterness he forgot the woman before
him; and his voice rang out passionately in the room. He had clutched
her hand until it hurt and she drew it away, cowering in her chair to
escape the wild torrent of his words.
“Please, Wayne, no more of it! You are spoiling the afternoon! It is
getting dark and we must be going home.”
He did not heed her but rang the bell and when the servant came he
told him to bring whiskey, and to be quick about it. She expostulated
while he was gone; she begged him not to throw away the advantage he
had gained by his long abstinence; she threatened never to speak to him
again if he drank a drop. The man brought a bottle and glasses, and
said as he put it down, “That’s the Rosedale special, sir; you put it
in yourself four years ago.”
Mrs. Craighill rose as the door closed, and made a motion as though to
seize the bottle.
“Just let it alone,” he said: “I want to show you something.”
He filled the whiskey glasses full, and brimmed the water glasses with
the liquor, whose odour nipped the air keenly. Then he set the bottle
down and folded his arms.
“Addie, every drop of blood in me calls for that stuff; I know every
sensation it would give me and three months ago I would have given my
immortal soul for a spoonful; but I’m just as safe from it as though
it were locked up behind steel doors. No power on earth could make me
touch a drop.”
So long as he made love to her she understood; this bit of bravado
disturbed and baffled her. But here at least was something that
required prompt commendation, and while she had been better satisfied
by the first direction of his talk, here was a zone of safety in which
they might stand together in security. She rose and placed her hands on
his shoulders.
“You are splendid; you are fine and brave and I am proud of you, Wayne,
dear!”
His manner changed instantly and he caught her hands and clasped them
tight. He was still breathing deeply from his long harangue, but in a
moment he spoke quietly, with a return of the tenderness with which he
had begun.
“I’m a beast to frighten you that way; and I must have hurt this poor
little hand.”
He kissed it and swung her hands lightly, looking into her face
tenderly.
“What a terrible big bear you are! And everything was peaceable and
cosy and you let your temper get the better of you.”
The snow, still falling densely, had hastened the twilight and night
was near. “We must go--at once--at once! What if the car wouldn’t run
in the snow?”
“What if it wouldn’t! They can give us dinner here--right here on the
hearth. They can always put up something--it’s the rule of the Club,
and there’s no end of wood for the fire.”
“We are going straight home--just as straight as we can go. Please!”
She tried to free herself, but he held her hands fast, laughing into
her eyes, and suddenly he put his arms around her and drew her close
and kissed her full upon the lips. The firelight danced fitfully about
them as they stood thus. He had raised his head to repeat the kiss,
when steps sounded upon the veranda. Someone cried aloud once, twice,
and beat upon the door, and when Wayne flung it open Jean Morley,
frightened and sobbing, stumbled across the threshold.
Wayne plunged through the snow-filled dusk after a man who had turned
away from the veranda steps and was running swiftly down the road. To
his surprise the fugitive, who had at once widened the distance between
them, stopped short and wheeled round.
“I meant no harm! I meant no harm!” cried a voice.
“Good God, Joe! What are you doing here?”
“Is it you, Mr. Wayne? I guess I’m crazy, that’s all. I meant no harm.
She’ll tell you herself I meant no harm.”
“We’ll see about that. I told you to stay at the house. I’m surprised
and disappointed in you. I’ll see you about this to-night. Now go to
the car--back there under the shed--and bring it out right away and
take us in. And you needn’t try to smash it on the way home; go in by
the Red Oak road and take your time.”
Wayne was not more surprised to find that his man Joe had been Jean
Morley’s pursuer than by the young fellow’s evident distress, so
markedly in contrast to his usual amiable cocksureness. It was no time
for inquiry and debate. The snow was already ankle-deep and it was
imperative that they start home at once.
Wayne, returning to the club-house, found Jean Morley, sitting by
the fire, with Mrs. Craighill ministering to her. She had not yet
recovered from her fright; her clothes were wet and her dark hair had
shaken loose about her face. Mrs. Craighill appealed to Wayne for an
account of what had happened, and her surprise was manifest when Wayne
addressed the crumpled refugee quietly by name.
“Mrs. Craighill, this is Miss Morley.” Whereat Mrs. Craighill’s “Oh!”
expressed rather more than surprise. “Miss Morley is an acquaintance
of mine; we met”--and he smiled at the girl--“at the parish house at
Ironstead where she is one of Mr. Paddock’s assistants.”
Jean rose, and aware that an explanation was necessary she offered it
immediately, standing forlornly on the hearth.
“I had gone for a walk in the country; I have been in the habit of
taking an afternoon once a week, and it was so fine at noon that I
ventured on a longer excursion than usual. I took the train to Rosedale
Heights, and struck off across the fields. I turned back when it began
to snow, but lost my way and it was not till then that I saw that
someone had followed me.”
“The man who followed you was my chauffeur; is there any reason why he
should be annoying you?” demanded Wayne.
“No, there is no reason; but I know him. I have known him a long time.
I’m sure he didn’t mean to trouble me--he wouldn’t do that. I was
foolish to run, but the dark was coming on and I was not sure of the
way in the snow. I ran up on the veranda more for shelter and to get my
bearings than in fear--I really was not afraid!”
Her hearers were struck by the fact that she seemed anxious to minimize
the incident. She turned toward the door saying:
“I need not trouble you further; I can very easily walk to the station.”
“Not a bit of it!” exclaimed Mrs. Craighill. “We were just ready to
start and it will be perfectly easy to take you home. Is the machine
ready, Wayne?”
Mrs. Craighill was pointedly ignoring him in her attentions to the
girl. She was holding her hat to the fire to dry; the caretaker’s wife,
who had been sent for dry shoes and stockings, led Miss Morley to her
own room to change. Mrs. Craighill had been a good deal shaken by the
sudden invasion of the peaceful club fireside, but she had not lost her
wits. The housekeeper had been drawn to the scene, not merely for aid,
but to sustain and support the two culprits of the tea table, before
the bedraggled girl who had interrupted the afternoon’s drama.
The spell had been broken; the arrested embrace, the defeated kiss
might not be recovered at once. Mrs. Craighill placed a chair between
herself and Wayne and from this vantage point surveyed him with
severity as she touched a loosened strand of hair into place. They
were now on the most formal footing; and he smiled slightly before the
bristling bayonets with which she demanded explanations.
“Well, who is she?”
“Oh, don’t be so fierce about it, Addie! I couldn’t help it. She’s just
what I said--a girl I met at Paddock’s mission at Ironstead. She’s an
art student; Fanny is helping her; she’s one of Fanny’s enthusiasms.”
“Do you suppose--do you suppose she saw us?”
“I doubt it; she didn’t have time!” and Wayne laughed. “But it would
make no difference if she did.”
“Oh, you think it wouldn’t! Well, it might make a lot of difference to
me--had you thought of that?”
“Why, of course, Addie, it would be unfortunate, deplorable; but
there’s no reason for worrying about it. She was running from a
man--the man happened to be Joe, my chauffeur.”
“Then it _is_ a pretty business! How do you know that Joe didn’t come
here to look for us?”
“Because Joe is not that sort of fellow. I know him well; he’s devoted
to me.”
“He may have thought this was another; I don’t like it. I trusted you
absolutely and you have made a clumsy mess of it. And besides, you had
no business to do _that_--what you were doing--you took advantage of my
kindness and sympathy.”
“For heaven’s sake, cheer up! If the girl hadn’t broken in here just at
the wrong moment it would have been all right, wouldn’t it?”
He was laughing in an effort to blunt the edge of her displeasure, but
his attitude accentuated her anger.
“No, it would not! It was wrong and wicked of you! But what have you
done with Joe?”
“He’s going to run the machine home--all of us--including Miss Morley.”
“Just after you caught him pursuing a helpless girl through a
snow-storm in a wild place in the country! Do you mean to say you
haven’t discharged him? You have certainly lost your mind!”
“You wouldn’t have me leave him here, would you, to walk in?”
“It might be interesting to know just what _she_ was doing away out
here in a storm like this, with a man following her.”
“Well, that’s about as broad as it is long. I don’t believe we’d better
go into that! She’s a simple little girl from the country and our world
is a big dark mystery to her; very likely she’s speculating as to what
you and I are doing here in a snow-storm, with all the evidences of a
quiet little party--to say nothing of the whiskey bottle and all the
glasses full?”
He spread his hands over the table, which was not eloquent of
abstinence.
“It looks like the merriest kind of an orgy, doesn’t it? And it’s all
my fault--every bit of it. No matter what they say, it simply does not
pay to be good! Here’s a whole quart of the best rye in the world, used
merely to demonstrate my own powers of resistance. There isn’t a man in
the whole State of Pennsylvania who would believe me if I swore I had
poured out whiskey just to smell it.”
His hand touched one of the filled glasses; he raised it high and
looked at it with a fierce craving in his eyes; then slowly very
slowly, without taking his eyes from it, he put it down. She had
watched him in silence, wondering; but he continued in his light,
bantering tone. “As I was saying, it’s all my fault. I’m guilty on all
counts of the indictment. You were a perfectly helpless woman in the
hands of a monster. I’m sorry, Addie; I’m just as penitent as can be;
and I’m going to get you out of the scrape as fast as I can. I’ll take
the whole burden of it--explanations, lies, everything! Now be a good
girl, won’t you, and don’t let everybody know you’re angry--though you
_are_ charming when you’re ruffled.”
He had persuaded her to a more amiable humour when Miss Morley
returned, and she met the girl and led her to the fire with solicitous
murmurs.
“We can go at once now, Wayne, can’t we?”
“The car awaits your pleasure, ladies!”
“But please don’t trouble about me,” cried Jean. “It’s only a little
way to Rosedale Heights and I can take the train there and be home in
half an hour.”
“We can’t allow it! It’s a long walk to the station and we have the big
motor with lots of room and to spare.”
“It was the oddest chance that brought us here,” Mrs. Craighill went on
to say, as she held the girl’s cloak. “Mr. Craighill had taken me to
call on some friends who are spending the winter at their farm beyond
here. It was later than I thought when we started and we ran in here to
telephone home that we should be late for dinner.”
It was a sufficient explanation, blithely uttered; Wayne, bringing his
stepmother’s things to the fire, hoped she would not protest too much.
The matter of the whiskey bottle, for one thing, was a part of the _res
gestæ_ which it seemed best to leave to the mercy of the trial judge.
Night had fallen when they left the club-house and the forward lamps
of the car cut a broad path of light over the snow. Wayne adjusted one
of the movable seats in the tonneau so that he faced the two women,
and turned on the electric light. The thing had its ridiculous side;
the pains Mrs. Craighill was taking to be polite to the girl struck
him as funny; but by the time the car reached the highway more serious
reflections engaged him. Jean Morley’s account of her walk afield was
plausible enough and he did not question it; he wondered whether Mrs.
Craighill’s story had carried equal conviction. An effort to assure
himself that it was not important what the girl thought, found him
looking straight into her eyes, whose gray-blue depths and sorrowful
wistfulness seemed more fathomless than at any of their previous
meetings. Her knowing Joe, the ball player and chauffeur--the man
who now guided them home--added a puzzling factor; they were utterly
irreconcilable characters. His glance rested first on one woman and
then the other as he unconsciously compared them--Mrs. Craighill, trim
and smart, with the girl, whose shabby, discoloured gloves, her plain
little hat with its rumpled feather, her cheap coat, were vesture of
a different world. Only an hour before he had kissed the one; he had
held her unresisting in his arms; she was pretty, charming amusing, but
the glow of the afternoon had paled; their adventure had ended on a
frightened, smothered half-note.
He had been checked in the course he had marked for himself; whirled
out of the straight current into the labouring waters of indecision. He
had resolved upon an evil thing; he had hoisted sail and steered for
the rocks, but the plunging depths might not be so attainable after
all! That potential superstition, latent in us all, and to which strong
men are often susceptible, teased him with questions as to why this
girl had walked into his life. There, too, was Paddock, the clerical
sentimentalist. Only a little while before Paddock had crossed the
threshold of his office and struck down, in effect, the cup with which
he was about to consecrate his life to evil things. It is the way
of the guilty to take counsel of omens; the knocking at the gate in
Macbeth is the loud beating of every conscience-struck heart. Wayne’s
imagination played upon the figure of Jean Morley, drifting through the
storm to the remote house where a woman, weak as he was weak, yielded
herself to a kiss he had calculated in coldest reason.
The occasional glances that Mrs. Craighill vouchsafed him meant his
dismissal, for the time at least. It was plain from her conduct that
the ground here lost might not easily be regained; but he was surprised
to find in his brooding that he cared so little. Addie’s pique was
absurd; but he had kissed women before and they were prone to magnify
the gravity of their indiscretions, and to sulk afterward. His thoughts
traversed a circular track, but the fire had gone out in his blood.
Rousing from his absorption suddenly he found Jean’s eyes bent upon
him, wondering, pitiful and sad. He had not heeded what the women were
saying to each other, but now Mrs. Craighill asked him where they were
and he looked out upon the lights of the city.
“Shall we take Miss Morley home first?” he asked.
“Dear me, no! She must stop and have dinner with us. Better than that,
won’t you stay all night with me, Miss Morley? It’s still snowing and
it will be hard getting about town to-night. You see, your knowing Mrs.
Blair makes it seem that we _all_ know you.”