Silver Wings E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Amory is working as a social secretary for a well-to-do family. While trying to keep her employer’s preacher nephew from having his heart broken by houseguests, she has plenty of time to worry about the ill aunts she has left behind to earn money for and the dashing pilot for whose soul and safety she is praying.

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

SILVER WINGS

Copyright

First published in 1931

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

Chapter 1

Amory had walked from the station to save the taxi fare, but had she realized the distance, even her courageous heart might have hesitated.

“Third mansion on the right, not the third residence—” the cryptic station agent had advised her tersely, and Amory envisioned a possible row of neat two-story brick homes, with larger houses beyond set in wide lawns. She picked up her suitcase briskly and stepped off down the elm-shaded road. Her trunk would follow later.

The street opened out amply and leisurely with no houses at all for some distance, nothing but green fields edged by neat hedges. Then a large old-fashioned brick house emerged in glimpses through the trees. It was set far back in a well-kept lawn, with a flower garden at one side. She paused and studied it. Was this a residence or a mansion? Had she possibly made a mistake and turned the wrong way at the station? But no, the agent had been watching her. He would surely have told her if she had been wrong.

She gave the brick house another appraising glance and revised her ideas of residences and incidentally of Briarcliffe. If such palaces as this one on her right were mere residences, what would the mansions be? And if she had come to live in a mansion, would the modest wardrobe contained in her small shabby suitcase and her small shabby trunk suffice, even for a social secretary? Somewhat apprehensively she went on and presently passed a big white colonial house enmeshed by a labyrinth of small, box hedges. Two lovely stone houses were next, built long and low like bungalows, with arched lattices covered with roses in bloom. And cozy homelike gardens. Well, at least these were not mansions, but still, they spoke of wealth. Perhaps the agent meant these were not to be counted, and the first two must have been mansions. That was it, probably.

The next place was Norman in architecture. She decided it was the third mansion and walked confidently up the drive and rang the doorbell. But the maid who answered the door answered curtly that the Whitneys did not live there. She did not know where they lived. She was new at the place, and the folks were all out.

Amory went back to the street again and stood, bewildered, but finally decided to go on, as there was no one in sight whom she could ask.

The next house was another colonial, smaller than the first, and she hardly knew whether to class it as a mansion or not. Three more houses she passed doubtfully, and then another large stone house with elaborate awnings and a wide orange and black umbrella spread over a tea table on the lawn.

There were some children playing around a fountain, and a man was cutting the hedge about the terrace. She decided to try again.

The children only stared when she asked them, but the man turned from his work and told her, “It’s some ways up the pike, lady. The third large mansion on yer right—”

“But which is the first mansion?” she asked in despair, setting down the suitcase, which now was making her feel its every pound. “Do you count from here, or where?”

The man looked at her as if she were an ignoramus, but answered good naturedly, “There’s two more ’ouses, lady, beyont this, an’ then ye come to the big hestates. It’s the third one of them, ma’am, the third hestate!”

Amory thanked him and picked up her suitcase, but as she went wearily down the walk, she was possessed by a desire to laugh aloud. So she was going to an “hestate”! What would Aunt Hannah say to that? What would Rayport think if they knew? How Helen and Miriam and Esther would exclaim wistfully! How far removed she felt herself already! Could she stand it, this new world that seemed at just this glimpse like another universe? What part had she in a world like this? Oh, of course she had come to work and not to have part in the life at all, but already the little lonesome part of her that lived and loved felt suddenly appalled at the wide difference there would be between this new life and the precious one she had left behind in the quaint, loving, friendly hometown where she had been brought up by her two dear maiden aunts.

But this would not do. She must not get maudlin before she arrived. She was here to earn good money to help get Aunt Hannah the nurse and the specialist she needed and to provide a lot of necessities to make it easier for frail little Aunt Jocelyn now that Amory was not to be there to save her from the hard knocks of life.

So she was to live in a mansion! Well, she might have known it from the size of the salary the Whitneys were willing to pay. It was nothing short of a miracle that such a salary had fallen to her lot! If it hadn’t been for the minister who used to know Mr. Whitney in college days and happened to meet him on a trip to town and find out he was looking for a social secretary for his wife, she never would have got it, of course. Now the difficulty would be to keep it! And then for the thousandth time she was visited by her fears. Yes, of course, she was good at dictation. Hadn’t she taken the prize in the contest? And of course the Rayport Seminary had had a marvelous advantage over other small-town schools, in having had as principal for five years a woman of national reputation. She had come to Rayport to be near her old mother who was slowly dying of an incurable trouble and could not be moved without great suffering. Well, all of those things would count—she must just do her best.

At last she passed the next two big houses, and then a great stone wall with immense corner pillars, vine clad and rose capped, announced the beginning of the first “hestate.” Far ahead of her, as if they were miles away, loomed more pillars. When she came to them in her weary plodding, they proved to be furnished with iron grillwork that gave a glimpse of a far white-marble building that fully bore out the name mansion.

Amory put her suitcase down and sat on it for a few minutes to rest in the shadow of this great gateway. She felt like a very little pilgrim indeed as she looked wistfully through the iron gates and studied the beautiful palace in the distance, wondering if the Whitney place would be anything like it.

Suddenly a shining automobile swept toward her, and in a panic she picked up her suitcase and started on again. Suppose it should be her future employer riding in that car! She did not want to be caught like a little tramp sitting on her dusty suitcase by the roadside!

But the car swept in at the drive after a pause for the chauffeur to open the gates, and she caught a glimpse of a proud woman and a girl with bright hair and reddened lips sitting in the backseat.

By this time she was very tired and much disheartened. But there was only one more estate before she came to her destination, so she took courage and plodded on. After all, she wouldn’t have thought this much of a walk if she had been at home. She couldn’t have come more than three miles, and what were three miles, even with a burden to carry? What was a mere little suitcase? She had often carried heavier burdens as far. No, it was her heavy heart that was the matter! She was homesick! Just plain homesick. She wanted to turn tail and run back where she had come from. She wanted to sit down to supper with Aunt Jocelyn and tell her about the journey. She wanted to eat the white raised biscuits and honey and the dainty omelet Aunt Jocelyn would prepare. Oh, she was hungry! Just tired and hungry like a baby! She wanted to go to prayer meeting tonight and see if the boys of her Sunday school class would all be there. She wanted to play the wheezy old piano as she had done ever since she was a little girl; she wanted to hear the minister pray tenderly, as he would tonight she was sure, for “the one who has left us for a little while to do Thy will in other fields,” that would be the way he would put it. How it choked her to think about it all. How dear home seemed! Even the threadbare old red carpet in the prayer meeting room seemed dear, though there had been times in the past when she had hated it and longed to do something about getting a new one.

She wanted to be home and feel she had a right to stay there. Why, even Fred Holley’s freckled face and kindly smile would have been a welcome sight on that road at that minute, and if Fred Holley had only dreamed it possible, he would have been there if he missed a whole day’s work in his garage where he was doing well. Fred Holley had dogged her steps and surrounded her with his unwelcome attentions ever since she was in high school, and he had been the one thing at home from which she was glad to get away.

She was plodding now past a long stretch of towering rhododendron that completely hid the second estate from the view of the road. It seemed endless, but on the other hand, the scene was growing interesting. To the left of the road the land swept away into velvety billows, and she presently became aware that she was passing a most marvelous golf course. Rayport had a golf club, and a fairly good course. She had often played on it with friends who were members, although she could not afford either the time or the money to join the country club herself. But she knew a golf course when she saw it, and by some fine instinct she became aware that this must be the most super golf course that her imagination had ever dreamed of.

A widely spreading, stately edifice presently came to view, nestled far among picturesque foliage, and this, of course, must be the country club. Likely they called it Briarcliff Country Club or else some fantastic more distinctive name. So she whiled away her long pilgrimage with imaginings and wondered if she would ever have the opportunity to see that beautiful building up close.

Behind and beyond the country club buildings the valley stretched away to far reaches, like an endless golf course, and edging it were lovely hills, blending into blue distances. It was a beautiful place in which she was walking. There was probably a marvelous view from those well-hidden mansions behind the stone walls and thick rhododendron growth. And what would the third mansion be like—the one where she was to live?

At last she came to a huge fence, like wrought-iron lacework, towering above her head, and behind it the soft feathery fringe of a beautiful hemlock hedge. It cast a cool shade along the road, and its breath seemed to fill the air with balm. It reminded her of the woods behind the old sawmill at home, and her step quickened eagerly.

The hedge with its iron enclosure reached farther than any of the other estate boundaries she had passed, but at last she came to an opening that was hidden, almost disguised by the thick growth of great trees, which had been increasing the farther she went until now it seemed almost like a forest. Here suddenly the drive swept in by a cool dark curve into dense shade.

She stopped and caught her breath in delight. The sun was hot, and she was very warm and tired. It was like a cooling breath, this lovely shaded way.

She entered cautiously, like Alice going into Wonderland. It seemed unbelievable that she should be entering a place like this and presuming to think she belonged there. Could it be possible that this was the place where she was to spend the summer?

She sat down on her suitcase again and taking off her hat, let the breeze fan her heated forehead. She leaned back and looked up at the cool interlacing branches overhead and drew in a deep breath of the resinous fragrance. Then with quick memory of the car that had swept into that other entrance farther back, she smoothed her hair and hastily put on her hat again, straightening it by the little mirror in her handbag. Someone might drive in here any minute, and she would not wish to be caught this way, even by a servant.

With renewed courage, she took up her suitcase and went on with brisker step up the drive.

Even then it was a good quarter of a mile before she reached the house. The lovely winding drive went for a long distance, cool and deep among the pines and hemlocks, until she began to think she had made a mistake and gone into a forest instead of a gentleman’s driveway. Then, just as she was beginning to get anxious, the foliage thinned, and there came a glimpse of a wonderful stone mansion like a crown upon a rise of ground. She caught her breath in wonder, this time exclaiming aloud. Could this be one man’s house? A mansion indeed! It was like a castle! It could not be that this was the place where she was engaged to serve as secretary! She had somehow made a great mistake, come too far or something. But at least now that she had come, she would go up to the mansion and see it. She could have the excuse that she had missed her way, and once, just once in a lifetime, she would see what a great castle looked like close at hand.

She had some thought of leaving her suitcase back under the bushes till she should return. It would be safe enough hidden under some of those low-hanging hemlocks, and it would be so much easier walking, and so much more dignified than appearing at the door of a place like that to ask the way, carrying a great shabby suitcase.

Then she reflected that something might happen to it—some dog might pull it apart, or a tramp find it, and she could not afford to lose her meager wardrobe. So she toiled on.

The way grew lovelier as she neared the house. Fountains were revealed in nooks by the way, dripping cool water from the rocky crevice of a little unsuspected grotto into a great stone jar that reminded one of Old Testament wells and shepherd girls, or showering soft silver spray into a quiet pool where lazy lilies rested and silent goldfish glided like brilliant phantoms beneath the surface. And higher up in the sunlight there were great bursts of flowers, like embroidery, in borders on the lawns and fringing the terraces. More than once she stopped in ecstasy over the beauty opening up before her, and still the castle seemed far away.

The drive wound out at last, and suddenly the mansion stood before her and was almost overwhelming in its grandeur. Built of rough stone in severe but classic lines, it seemed like some great rock that had not been made with hands. Its battlements, clear cut against the bright afternoon sky, were startling. She could scarcely believe that she was standing so near to something that looked so much like a picture from the old world, so much a thing of history and of the past. Of course it was a reproduction of some great old historic wonder. Nothing modern could be so perfect and so much a thing that seemed to have stood through the ages.

A stone seat withdrawn from the edge of the drive into a shelter of sweeping trees offered harbor while she caught her breath and gathered courage, and she dropped upon it and gazed, gradually turning her eyes from the house itself to the view across the great lawn and down the valley. And now she saw that she had climbed far above the tall hemlocks that fringed the road so thickly, and could look across them, to the hills beyond. The country club seemed a mere toy in the distance from this point. A wonderful view, with a silver river winding in the valley like a plaything! One could not think of even a mansion in the sky having any more wonderful view.

The sound of an approaching motor brought her back to her own situation once more, and she arose hastily and hurried toward what appeared to be the main entrance of the house, wondering if perhaps she ought not to hunt a door more fitting for a mere secretary’s entrance.

An imposing butler answered her timid ring, and when she said, “I’m Miss Lorrimer,” he said, “Oh, yes, Miss Lorrimer. The maid will show you to your room.”

Amory had a glimpse of a space and beauty, soft colors and abundant ease, a suggestion of lovely things in their rightful settings such as she had read about and dreamed about but never hoped to see with her earthly eyes.

The maid appeared like a genie and led her up wide stairs and down a corridor that gave light to the room below through many little latticed windows. She had a glimpse of lovely rooms done in soft pastel colorings, of silken draperies, priceless rugs, and luxury everywhere. Then a door was thrown open into a room done in cool pale green and silver with wide windows, low seats, and a couch and desk that were attractive.

The maid opened another door and Amory saw another smaller room, with a rosy spread on the bed and matching draperies at the windows. She glimpsed a white tiled bath through the door beyond.

“Madam thought you could be comfortable here,” said the maid in a colorless voice. “She wanted you near her own apartments for convenience in the mornings.”

“Oh, it is lovely!” said Amory, with her heart in her eyes. Then she remembered that she must not gush before servants and that she must not behave as if she were not used to nice things—two of the principles in which she had been trying to school herself ever since she received the letter saying her application had been accepted.

“Thank you,” she said less eagerly, with a lovely smile to the other young woman. “I am sure I shall be quite comfortable here. And now, I wonder if you can tell me when I can see Mrs. Whitney.”

“Tomorrow morning,” said the maid, still colorlessly. “Madam has a house party on and the place is full of guests. She’ll be busy all the afternoon and evening, but she’ll see you at ten tomorrow. She’ll ring for you then, and I’ll show you the way to her room. She said you’d want to rest and get settled. Has your luggage come yet? Did you bring it in the taxi with you?”

Amory grew pink, remembering her long walk and the precious dollar she had saved, and conscious, too, of her dusty slippers. But she must not tell the servant that she had walked. She must remember her two principles. And of course she should have known that this was no way to arrive at a place like this—on foot and carrying her own suitcase! However, she would probably learn.

“They are sending my trunk from the station soon,” she said, walking toward the window and trying to look unflustered. And then, catching sight of the view from the window, she forgot her resolve about gushing and burst forth again with a soft exclamation.

“Oh, isn’t it lovely from the window!” she said, as if the maid were another girl like herself. “I shall just drink in all this beauty!”

“Yes, it’s a lovely place,” said the girl, as if such things mattered little to her. “Would you like me to unpack your suitcase for you? Madam said I was to help you in any way you needed.”

Amory turned and flashed another smile at her.

“Oh, no, please,” she said, with an inward gasp at the idea of this prim maid going over all her intimate little possessions and pitiful makeshifts. “I’ve nothing else to do, you know, and I’ll enjoy getting settled.”

“Very well,” said the colorless voice. “Then I’ll go down. It’s time to serve tea, and they’ll be wanting me. I’ll bring your tea up here.”

“Oh!” said Amory, quite wondering at the idea, for tea wasn’t served as a rule in Rayport unless one was giving an affair. But she realized that she was hungry, and tea would be very refreshing.

“But do you need to bother coming up? Couldn’t I just slip down and get it myself, if you would show me the way about?”

“It’s no trouble,” said the maid, and Amory couldn’t be sure whether there was a note of scorn in her voice for one who had offered to serve herself, or whether it was gratitude.

“I’ll show you about later, if you like,” added the maid, and going out, closed the door.

Suddenly Amory felt tremendously alone, shut in by walls so thick that no sound penetrated, surrounded by a loveliness that was so foreign to all that she had known before that it made her throat ache to look at it. She felt as if she had stolen, unaware to the owners, into a spot that was too great for her small powers. She ought to go down and find them, somewhere, somehow, and tell them that she was only a bluff and that she would never be able to fill any kind of a position in such a great house as this.

But here she was and bidden to keep out of the way till the morrow. There was nothing to do but put her things neatly away and bide her time until summoned to her employer.

She went about the room examining every article and making soft little gleeful noises of pleasure over things. This room was no servants’ quarters. It had evidently been one of the regular guest rooms, for everything in it was beautiful.

She went into the rose-draped bedroom and looked around in delight. She flung open a door that she thought must be a closet and a light sprang forth, revealing a room as large as Aunt Hannah’s bedroom in Rayport. Rods and hangers and shelves! Shoe trees and hat trees galore! Surely the maid had made a dreadful mistake and put her in the wrong room. Perhaps she ought to do something about it.

She hung up her small dark hat on a hand-painted dolly. She hung up her limp little georgette coat in which she had journeyed on a pink satin hanger finished in rosebuds. Then she went into the spacious white bathroom finished in rose and black borders and washed her face and hands with a cake of soap that she had seen much advertised in the magazines but had never hoped to use because of its price. If this room was a mistake, at least she would have these few minutes of fun, playing it belonged to her.

When she had made her hair smooth and tidy and had hung up one or two things out of her suitcase that she was afraid might wrinkle, she went and sat down by the window in her green sitting room.

“This is my dressing room!” she said to herself, looking around with shining eyes. “What fun I’ll have writing to Aunt Hannah and Aunt Jocelyn about it!”

Then her eyes sought the lovely distance.

And all at once she saw something like a bird, or perhaps it was only a large insect sailing across the sky. Of course it was an airplane, but what fun to watch it from such a high place! She never had been where she could watch one so well. They were always high up overhead when they went over Rayport.

The insect became a bird, and the bird a great airplane at last, flashing its silver wings in the sunlight. She knelt by the windowsill and looked up at it. It seemed to be coming straight toward the house, and she could hear the throb of the engine now. Was that the flier looking down? It thrilled her to think she was so near to the great machine and to the man who dared to navigate the skies.

Then down below she heard voices, laughing, and a group of young people suddenly appeared on the terrace in light lovely dresses, sport frocks, and uniforms, things she had read about. They were looking up and calling, waving their hands. One girl took the long coral scarf from her head and waved it.

“That’s Teddy!” they called. “There he is! I knew he’d be on time!”

A white paper fluttered down as the plane circled away, and the girls ran screaming and laughing to catch it.

“It’s mine!” they called.

“No! It’s mine!”

“Better give it to Diana!” someone said, laughing. “She claims all that flies as her own!”

Amory drew back into the shadow of the curtain lest she be seen by the crowd below, but her eyes were on the great plane that was circling lower and lower now, and she realized with another thrill that it was going to land right there, and she was going to be able to see it.

The airstrip was not a quarter of a mile away, just beyond the garden, and the hedge was low there. Amory was far above the ground and felt that she had a front seat at the most exciting moment of her life.

Like a great silver moth it settled down, ran smoothly for a little space, and came to rest. She watched it in wonder, and presently a figure disengaged itself from the body of the machine and after walking about the creature and examining it here and there, started toward the garden gate.

As he came nearer, Amory could see that he wore an aviator’s uniform and that he had a handsome face, tanned to a lovely golden brown.

Striding through the garden gate as the group of young people ran laughing to meet him, he pulled off his helmet and swung it in his hand. Amory saw that he had golden brown hair, crisp and curly and short cut, and a strong, well-chiseled chin and nose. His eyes were very blue, and he raised them suddenly to her window, while the group of giddy girls below caught him and pulled him and pretended to try to kiss him. They were laughing eyes, and they looked straight into Amory’s with a laughing, astonished question in their blue depths.

“What does he see? What is he looking at?” cried the struggling girls as he warded them off, and they all looked up at Amory’s window, but Amory was not there. She had dropped suddenly to her knees, with her burning cheeks hidden in her hands.

Just then there came a knock at the door!

Chapter 2

It was only the maid with a tray, but Amory was trembling as if she were about to be brought to trial in a court of law. What on earth was the matter with her, she wondered, acting silly like this! Just because she had been caught looking out the window. She had a right to look out the window, didn’t she, even if she was only a hired servant?

She scrambled to her feet and met the question in the maid’s eye.

“I was watching an airplane land,” she explained confusedly.

“Oh, that’s Mr. Theodore,” explained the maid. “He’s just back from his Canada hop. They said he was coming, but his aunt didn’t seem to expect him very much. Now he’s come, things will happen fast. He keeps things always on the go.”

“Oh,” said Amory, striving for some of her vanished dignity. “Does he live here? It must be exciting to know someone who flies.”

“Well, no, he doesn’t live here, but he comes often. His aunt always sends for him whenever she has a house party. But since he’s been flying, she can’t always get him. That’s why she let them make an airstrip over there on her property, so he could come just any time and not have to travel far after he landed. Do you like your tea strong, Miss Lorrimer? And will you have cream or lemon?”

“Oh, lemon, please,” said Amory, “but don’t trouble about me. I’ll look after myself. I’m used to doing it.”

“You’re very kind,” said the maid, “but I have my orders, of course. The cook sent you a bit of salad and a chicken sandwich. She thought you might be hungry after your journey, and dinner’s not till half past eight.”

“Oh, that was kind,” said Amory. “Thank her for me, please. And I hope I can do something for both of you sometime.”

The maid melted a little from her settled apathy. “You can call me Christine,” she volunteered, “and I’ll be back later for the tray.”

The tray proved to be most tempting. Delicate little chicken sandwiches, a delectable salad of which Amory had difficulty in identifying the ingredients, fragrant tea, cinnamon toast, and delightful little delicate cakes.

She settled down in an unobtrusive chair, quite out of range from any curious eyes below, and arranged the curtain so that she could watch the pretty panorama and bright costumes on the terrace and listen to the cheerful banter as it rose to her window while she ate.

Several young men had appeared below, and there was a subdued clatter of tea things as the well-trained servants moved about serving everybody. Amory could see Christine waiting with her serving tray, and that would likely be Mrs. Whitney in the violet frock pouring the tea. Amory felt she was wearing far too startling makeup to be pleasant, for the contrast of her whitened skin, carmine lips, and dead black, severely cut hair did not make a pleasing ensemble. Yet she could see that there was a certain style and character about her that made her attractive. She noticed that all listened when she spoke, as if they liked her and wanted to please her.

The Whitney girls were probably those two with dark hair and blue eyes. They looked like their mother, and presently she heard someone say, “Caroline Whitney, where on earth have you been all afternoon? You don’t mean you went off and played tennis again with that kid brother of yours! I say, that isn’t fair. None of the rest of us are practicing for the tournament.”

“Oh,” said the girl called Caroline, “you all have the same opportunity to practice. There are plenty of courts, and Ned will play with anybody that asks him at any hour of the day.”

“I’ll say he will,” said the other dark-haired girl. “He’s nagged me all day long, but I couldn’t see it. It was too hot.”

So, she had identified three of the household. Now who was the striking girl with the gold hair? Beautiful, even in spite of the dangling earrings and the too-high color, which to Amory seemed in bad taste. Wait! Wasn’t she the one who had caught the fluttering paper from the airplane as if it were her right? She must be Diana, then.

And now came the young aviator, with marvelous promptness, considering that he seemed to have changed his garments and looked as fresh as if he had not just arrived from a long flight.

It was interesting to watch them as they sat chattering and sipping their tea, calling little nothings back and forth to one another, gossiping about others who were to arrive that evening or on the morrow. Amory, from her sheltered chair behind the curtain, could see them all quite well and hear what they were saying. She hoped it wasn’t eavesdropping, this watching in on a group of beings who were as much out of her world as a bird is out of a human’s. It was just as well, she thought, for her to get a line on the people she was to be among. It would help her to adjust her life to her surroundings more quickly.

She sat there after she had finished her tray and put it aside, trying to think how it would seem if she were one of the guests in that house, instead of a paid secretary. How would she feel if she were sitting, for instance, down in that great chair with the high fan-shaped back, where the golden Diana sat, and the young aviator near with his teacup in his hand looking down and smiling at her? Would she be able to hold her own in a group of young people like that? It was not her world, but could she make a good showing in it if she had to, or would she be shy and awkward and be thinking of herself all the time?

But what a silly idea. It was not her world, and why should she imagine such things?

She was half impatiently turning away from the window when Mrs. Whitney spoke, and she lingered to listen to the pleasant, cultured voice, curious to know just what her employer would be like.

“I have just had a most annoying letter from Mr. Whitney’s nephew,” she said in a voice touched just the least shade with plaintiveness, as if appealing to her young guests to somehow make right whatever was troubling her. “He writes that he is coming to visit us if we will have him, and of course Mr. Whitney will think he’ll have to be made welcome. The worst of it is, Mr. Whitney adores him. He’s the son of his youngest sister who died years ago, and he idealized her. I shall have to have him, there are no two ways about it.”

Groans ensued from the two young Whitney girls. “What a plague!” said Caroline, tossing her curly black mane.

“It’s perfectly poisonous!” said Doris. “I mean to reason with Dad about it.”

“Well, it won’t do a particle of good!” said the mother sweetly. “Besides, he’s on the way. He’ll be here tomorrow morning, more is the pity, and your father won’t be home till tomorrow night. If I should tell him we had no room for his only nephew, he would never forgive me.”

“What’s the matter with him? Why worry so much? Isn’t he young?” called out a young woman who was stretched out, with a good length of silk stocking in evidence, on a long steamer chair. “Let him come! We can get away with several more men in the crowd and not know it.”

“Oh, but Susanne, he’s quite impossible!” said the hostess wearily. “He’s religious, you know, and he won’t be in the least congenial. In fact, he’s a regular preacher, has taken some kind of orders, you know. Besides all that, he has some awfully strange ideas. Thinks the end of the world is coming soon or something like that. Oh, he’s quite impossible! And to have him arrive just at this time, too, when I wanted everything to be perfect!”

“Holy cats!” exclaimed an impudent, pink-cheeked girl whose body resembled an animated pole. “I should say! Mother Whitney, what’ll you give us if we get rid of him without bothering Papa Whitney at all? I’ll bet we could do it. Leave it to us, and we’ll send him flying, without letting him know what it’s all about.”

“That’s an idea!” said one of the young men. “Send him flying! Get Teddy to carry him off and lose him, somewhere so far away he can’t get back till the party’s over.”

“Oh, but Mr. Whitney would never forgive Ted if he did that. Besides, I doubt if John would go. He’s quite too devoted to his work to take a day off for anything he considers worldly. I don’t know how he is now, but he was bad enough as a child. He’s bound to be worse from all I’ve heard.”

“Well, it will be dead easy to get rid of him,” declared Susanne. “We’ll just whoop it up and make it too hot for him to stay! He’ll pick up his belongings and run, if he’s that kind. I personally will see to that.”

“But Susanne, dear,” pleaded the hostess, “I couldn’t really let you do that, for the man will simply have to stay until his engagement to preach is over. It seems he’s supplying the village church for three weeks, and Mr. Whitney will insist on our being courteous to him. I’m not sure but he will think we ought to even go to church to hear him.”