"Have you opened your house?" Amelia persisted. "You're not staying——"
"She's staying here," said Raven. "Nan's taken pity on me and come up for a visit. Oh, Charlotte! here you are. Show Mrs. Powell to her room, will you?"
Charlotte appearing, white-aproned, in the doorway, looking like the beneficent goddess of home, Mrs. Powell greeted her urbanely and asked appropriate questions. Was she well, as well as she looked? And how was her husband? Always well, she remembered. Yes, she would go to her room, please. But she'd go up by herself. She knew the way. She should think so, indeed! And her reminiscent laugh endowed them with the picture of the little girl she had been, born and brought up in this very house.
"Oh, but it isn't up," said Raven cheerfully. "It's the west bedroom."
"Not——" she began, and he nodded, taking her coat from the chair.
"Yes, Old Crow's room. What was going to be his if he hadn't given 'em the slip. I put Nan into the west chamber. You'll be awfully comfortable in that room, Milly. I'll take in your bag."
Amelia, immediately circumspect when she did not see her way, did follow him, but she was in as great a state of suppressed dudgeon as a civilized lady, living by the latest rules, allows herself to be. Dick and Nan, left alone in the dining-room, turned upon each other like two young furies.
"You came up here," said Dick, in a tone of ill-suppressed ire, "to tell him we were coming. I call it a mean trick."
"What about you?" inquired Nan. "You'd better not talk about tricks. Can you think of a meaner one than giving him away to the entire middle west?'"
"The middle west!" echoed Dick bitterly. "I told my mother."