CHAPTER V.
THE DINNER.
The dinner was a grand success. Two long tables had been placed end to end, and around these tables gathered the light-hearted guests, skillfully seated in such a way that each youth found a congenial and charming girl at his elbow.
Of course, June was at Dick’s side. For the time being, Mrs. Steele and the two elderly ladies had withdrawn, and there was no one present to cast the lightest restraint on the innocent mirth of the gathering. Waiters were numerous, silent, and attentive, and the courses came on in a manner that would have done credit to a first-class hotel. Somewhere in a near-by room the orchestra discoursed appropriate music. Beneath the softened lights the china, cutglass, and silverware gleamed, and the girls, flushed with pleasurable excitement, seemed the fairest to be found in all the land.
“Of course, I’m ready to explode with curiosity, June,” said Dick, under cover of the chatter that rose about them.
“I suppose you are,” she laughed tantalizingly, giving him a look with those splendid eyes of hers that shot him through with the old-time thrill.
“But you don’t seem in any hurry to satisfy that curiosity. Don’t tantalize me, June. How did it happen?”
“Your brother brought my brother back with him to Wellsburg when he returned from the West.”
“Yes, I know; but Wellsburg is a long distance from Meadwold. It’s mysterious. I didn’t suppose Casper Steele knew you, yet I find you here at his father’s country home.”
“My father knows Mr. Payton Steele very well.”
“I see a faint ray.”