give you. That or the coal cellar.”

[55]

“Never mind!” sighed Chase, with true Christian resignation. “What am I, to complain? What am I?”

“I’d hate to tell you,” snapped Thaxton.

“What are you charging Clive?” demanded Willis.

“A penny a year. Laundry three cents extra. He—”

“Miss Gregg, sir. Miss Lane,” announced the sour-visaged butler, from the dining room doorway.

Thaxton arose wearily and went to meet his guests. All night he had mused happily on the rare chance which was to make Doris and himself housemates for an entire rapturous week—a week, presumably, in which Miss Gregg should busy herself on long daily inspection visits to Stormcrest. And now—an invalid and a cheery pest were to shatter that lovely solitude.

[56]

Chapter IV TWO OR THREE INTRUDERS

Chapter IV

YET luncheon was a gay enough meal. All the guests were old friends, and all were more or less congenial. Thaxton’s duties as host were in no way onerous, except when Willis Chase undertook to guy him as to his anomalous position as hotelkeeper—which Chase proceeded to do at intervals varying from two minutes to fifteen.

In the afternoon, Miss Gregg was forced to drive across to Stormcrest, to superintend the first touches of the decorators to her remaining rooms. Clive made some excuse for retiring shakily to his own rooms for a rest. Willis Chase had to go back to Stockbridge on urgent business—having found, on unpacking, that in his haste he had brought along all his evening clothes except the trousers.

Thus, for an hour or so, Vail had Doris Lane to himself. They idled about the grounds, Vail showing the girl his new sunken garden and his trout hatcheries. Throughout the dawdling[57] tour they talked idly and blissfully, and withal a whit shyly, as do lovers on whom the Great Moment is making ready to dawn. At their heels paced Vail’s dark sable collie, Macduff.

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