“Two of them,” thought I, and after dinner Ethel and I compared notes and we agreed that Cherry could have her choice.
Perhaps we jumped to conclusions, but to see Cherry was to love her, and Ethel told me that she was glad that Cherry was only a little girl when I first met her or “you might have been Mr. Paxton.”
“Phil, do you know who it would do good to have up here?” said Tom, after a burst of enthusiasm concerning the country. “Jack Manton. Jack Manton and Billy Edson. They’re both stone broke and they’re getting their country by taking walks out of New York, and this scenery would just about kill ’em both dead. Why don’t you ask ’em up?”
A roar followed this question.
“Let ’em sleep in the chimney,” I suggested, at which innocent remark Minerva, who was waiting on table, gave a suppressed giggle that set Cherry off and she was followed first by Ellery and then—of all the people in the world, by Mr. Hepburn. Probably Minerva’s act itself was so unheard of that it struck him as being humourous. A maid laughing at table.
But it was a lucky thing that Minerva was in the room. That is lucky for Jack and Billy.
“Kin I say sump’n?” said she to Ethel, and Ethel, rather astonished, said, “What is it?”
“They’s a lot of boards out in the woodshed, an’ James could build a place for those gen’lemen.”
“The very thing,” said Tom. “That’s it. That’s IT. Just ask ’em up and save their lives.”
“But you said it would kill ’em dead to come up,” said Cherry.