Wint laughed harshly. “All right, come in,” he said. “I don’t know any more about it than you do. I suppose Kite thought it would be cheaper to use our house than to hire a hall.”
B. B. said simply: “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Come in,” Wint repeated. “I’m up in the air, that’s all. Routt’s here already. Kite will be along, I suppose.”
“Routt?” B. B. echoed, in surprise.
“Yes; in there.”
Wint and B. B. went into the sitting room where Chase and Routt were talking awkwardly. After the first greetings, no one could think of anything more to say. B. B. broke the silence. “I saw a robin to-day,” he said. “They stay here, sometimes, right through the winter.”
Birds and flowers were B. B.’s hobbies; he knew them all. And other people recognized this interest in him, and shared it. They liked his enthusiasm. Chase said: “Is that so? I had no idea they stayed. It doesn’t seem to me I ever saw one in winter.”
“They live in the sheltered places,” said B. B. “You’ll find them in the woods, and the brushy hollows, and around houses where there is a good deal of shrubbery. Especially if the people put out a lump of suet for them to feed on.”
“Why, everybody ought to do that,” Chase declared, with a quick interest. “You ought to tell them to, in the Journal, B. B.”
B. B. smiled and said he was telling people just this, every week. He spoke of other birds. Chase seemed interested. Routt and Wint said nothing. Routt seemed uncomfortable; and that was a strange thing to see in this assured young man. Wint’s eyes were lowered; he was thinking. Lost in a maze of conjectures. Kite would be coming, any minute now.