“Oh, yes; frequently. Alice and Roy bought there, you know.”
“The deuce they did! You don’t mean to say so? Well, say, Jan, who’s living in the bungalow? ... Say, Janny, I often think....”
They were busy in reminiscences, interrupting one another, laughing, ejaculating, now and then arrested by a memory that was not altogether mirth-provoking and unexpectedly stirred them. At times Martin swayed in his seat and pounded his knee.
“By God!” he would shout gleefully, “by God, I’d forgotten that!—by God, that was a hot one, all right! Say,—that had gone completely out of my mind. You’re a wonder for remembering little things, Jan! ... By golly!”
The car rolled smoothly out over the paved highway that circled through the hills. Large, handsome houses with lights shining here and there from windows, and surrounded by tall, gaunt, leafless trees, alternated on either side of the road and fled past. Their own vehicle was but one link in a long chain of nimble bugs with glowing antennæ which crawled hard upon one another along the winding course.
There came an abrupt turn, the motor car swung up a steep driveway, slid on to crunching gravel, and stopped.
“Here we are!” exclaimed Martin. The chauffeur leaped from his seat and attentively opened the car door.
A large frame house of gracious lines, with exterior stone chimneys, many windows, and a precipitous lawn that swept down to the roadway a hundred feet or more below.
“We get a splendid view of the valley here,” said Martin, coming to stand beside Jeannette as she looked out across the country. The landscape was shrouded in dusk, pricked with a myriad of lights; there was a jagged silhouette of distant tree-tops and beyond a pale, mother-of-pearl sky touched faintly with dying pink.
They turned to the house and as Martin stooped to insert his latch-key there was the quick run of small feet within, the door was flung open and a little girl hurled herself upon him with a violent silent hug.