Benedict, on the back seat, said, “Oh, I don’t have to do anything to enjoy this. Just to be alive is enough in air like this. Isn’t it, Alice?”
And Alice agreed with him and the horses bore us higher and higher, slower and slower, and at last we arrived and Ellery and Cherry greeted us.
James came out to relieve the guests of their suit cases and I invited all hands to go to their rooms and remove the evidences of their smoky ride.
When Ethel and Madge had come down from our room I said to Ethel,
“No dressing, I suppose?”
“No, I suppose not,” said she, and there was a little note of regret in her voice.
I went up and washed and put on a cutaway and in a few minutes I came down and walked back and forth on the veranda.
In about a quarter of an hour the three men who were using Ellery’s chamber as a dressing room came down the front stairs. I caught a glimpse of them and lo, two were in Tuxedos, and Hepburn was in full evening clothes.
Quick as a wink, and before they saw me, I whisked around to the back of the house, and finding Ethel in the kitchen, where she was superintending some salad arrangement, I said,
“They’re all dressed. Me to my evening clothes.”