Part 32 (1/2)
Alec and Bob eagerly echoed Max's plea.
”Bachelors' hall? Well, I don't know that I mind, since my stuff hasn't gone back yet. Mother and Jo have company asked for next week, and will expect me to help entertain, but I can be out at Strawberry Acres more or less. Come up to the house in the car with me, while I explain; then we'll drive out. Al and Bob can ride on the running boards, if they like.”
They jumped on, feeling that to stay together was to mind things less.
It was odd how low of spirit they all were already. Surely, one would think that four strapping fellows might contemplate getting on for a s.p.a.ce without one slim young person who was accustomed not only to humour them, but to make three of them toe certain well-defined marks in the matter of clean linen, fresh cravats, and carefully parted hair. Yet not one of them was really willing to go home till the others should be coming along too.
In front of the fireplace, later, when Joanna had given them so good a dinner that it would seem as if their content could hardly be preyed upon by any contemplation of the future, Bob suddenly voiced the general sentiment. He was lying on his side upon the hearth-rug, his round face fiery from his proximity to the blaze.
”Why does it feel so different when you know people are miles away and getting farther every minute than when you know they've just gone to town for a party?” he queried, thoughtfully. ”They're away just the same--they aren't here, I mean. Why isn't being away the same thing as _being away_?”
At any other time this somewhat involved statement of conditions would have provoked jeers from the company. But no jeers were forthcoming. Max grunted, lying flat on his back on the couch--whose pillows Joanna had carefully plumped up--his heels on the arm at the end. Alec, standing at the window with his hands in his pockets, staring out into the frosty night, turned about and remarked that on a train averaging sixty to seventy miles an hour Sally must already be out of the state.
”Wonder if she's asleep,” speculated Bob. ”She used to like sleeping on sleepers, when father and mother used to take us around so much. Say, she had a whole section to herself--at least till we left, and n.o.body was coming aboard then. Hope she has the luck to keep it. Funny! The car was crowded, and so was the next one. I looked in.”
”Plenty of people may get on before midnight.” reflected Alec.
Jarvis picked up a magazine. ”Suppose I read aloud this article on railroading,” he proposed. The company consented and he began. He had not read two pages before he ran, so to speak, into a series of frightful railway wrecks. But, wis.h.i.+ng he had chosen something else, he kept on till suddenly Bob interrupted with a fierce: ”Cut it! I've got her knocked into five thousand pieces now--I'll dream of those confounded smash-ups and Sally in the midst of 'em, if you don't drop that magazine.”
The others murmured a somewhat sheepish a.s.sent, and Jarvis turned willingly enough to a tale of adventure at sea. A snore from the couch interrupted him in the middle of a most thrilling crisis, and only the appearance of Joanna with a big dish of s.h.i.+ny apples prevented Bob from following suit.
”Jove, Joanna, you're a good one. How did you come to think of it?” asked Alec, selecting a beauty and setting his teeth into it with a sense of refreshment.
”Miss Sally said I was not to forget anything she usually did, Mr. Alec,”
replied Joanna.
”If you remember everything she usually does you'll be a brick, Joanna,”
cried Bob, rousing to his opportunity and getting up on his knees to accept his apple.
”There's one thing she does, that n.o.body can possibly do for her,”
thought Jarvis as, consuming the crisp, cool specimen Joanna had bestowed upon him with a motherly smile for the boy she had known so long, he paced up and down the room, pa.s.sing the piano at the end with a vivid recollection of how Sally was accustomed to play what she called ”little tunes” upon it in the firelight.
”And that's to fill one small corner of her place in the home she has made here.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE SOUTHBOUND LIMITED
Sally's first letter home was a short one, stating merely that Uncle Timothy was very ill, very glad to see her, and that she was extremely thankful she had come. The second letter, two days later, showed strong anxiety. The illness was pneumonia, although not in its severest form; but Mr. Rudd's age was an important factor in the case. For a week bulletins were brief, then came a long letter, telling of improvement.
”The minute he is well out of danger she ought to come home,” was Max's opinion.
”She won't, though,” Alec predicted. ”She'll stay till she can bring him with her.”
”Not if she listens to me,” and Max set about writing a reply which would indicate to his sister in no uncertain terms the course he thought she should pursue.
Her answer was prompt. ”I want to come home just as much as you want to have me, Max dear, but it is so much to Uncle Timmy to have me with him I can't think of leaving.”
Max frowned over this. ”She seems to consult me precious little about anything lately,” he observed to Jarvis.
”You must admit she's grown up and can think for herself. Besides, much as I'd like to see her back, I think she's right,” was Jarvis's opinion.