"Just us two."
Gwen gave her a furtive little pinch. "Wretch!" she whispered. "Ignoble, disloyal wretch!"
"All's fair—you know the rest," returned Ethel with a mischievous laugh. Then some one proposed they begin the ghost stories. So the lights were put out, and only the glowing embers of the fire served to prevent utter darkness while the last hour was given to as blood-curdling tales as could be invented or remembered. Kenneth's was so uncanny that Dolly Hardy declared she could not listen to another one. "It is getting late anyhow," she said, "and I'd be scared of witches and hobgoblins and horrible headless monstrosities if we dared be out at midnight." So the girls gathered together their wraps while the men lighted their lanterns.
As the other girls were provided with escorts it fell to the lot of either Cephas or Kenneth to take Miss Fuller home, but she was quick to follow up her opportunity. "You go in my direction, Mr. Mitchell," she said. "May I walk in the light of your lantern as far as you are going? I've no doubt some of the others will see me home the rest of the way."
"Of course he'll have to see her home all the way," Gwen told herself as she saw them walk off. "That sly Ethel to carry off my rightful belonging, right under my very nose." She watched the bobbing lanterns casting their starry beams across the pasture, and then went indoors to find that Kenneth still lingered. "Why didn't you tell me you had sold a picture?" she asked.
"I hadn't a chance," he returned gloomily, "and besides," he added, "I didn't suppose it would interest you very much. It is much more to the point when a man is able to buy pictures."
"Do you think so?" said Gwen coldly. "I notice you didn't want to give a certain one the opportunity of buying yours. That was very unbusinesslike. You should have told him to come and see your pictures, and have made him take a dozen."
"I don't want his vile money," returned Kenneth fiercely.
"Why isn't it as good as anyone's? I am sure it was made fairly enough."
"You know he wanted to buy it for you."