"I know it is a barbarous hour, dear," Laura's cheerful contralto came over the wire, "but I've just been aroused from my juvenile slumbers by the telephone, and of course I must have revenge upon somebody. Listen, dear: I know that it only takes you about fifteen minutes to dress—of course you are not dressed yet? Well, begin this instant. Put on something for tramping and fussing around in the country. You must be over here by eight o'clock. We are going to have a romping day in the country. Now, hurry, won't you?"
"Just you and I, Laura?" asked Louise, delighted. A day in the country! Open fields to dispel vapors! The thought of it made her eager and excited.
"No, there'll be another," replied Laura. "I disregard the axiom, you know, that 'Three is a crowd.' Three needn't be a crowd if one of the three has a little tact and—and the knack of opportunely vanishing," and Louise heard her soft laughter. "A man I know has what he calls a little tumbledown place, with some ground around it, over in Jersey. He calls it Sullen Manor, because he says he always goes over there, in preference to all other places, when he feels the imperative need to sulk. Now, there is not another moment to be wasted in 'phoning. Start to dress this very instant! Will you solemnly promise me to be here on the stroke of eight? Very well. I shall be waiting. Goodbye."
Louise, "very trig and complete," as Laura remarked, in a suit of grey with a matching fur-trimmed grey toque, was with the astonished Laura a good quarter of an hour before eight.
"Heaven knows how you do it," said Laura, still in the hands of her maid. "Go into the dining-room and have some coffee, dear. I shall be with you directly."
Louise, humming happily at the thought of the care-free day ahead of her, sped into the bright dining room. John Blythe, sipping coffee at the table, rose to meet her. He looked fine and upstanding in his fresh, rough tweeds, his close-shaven face ruddy and his clear grey eyes showing an agate sparkle from the brisk walk to Laura's apartment from his own.
Louise halted abruptly in her astonishment when she saw him. But she was extremely glad to see him and said so frankly, resting her hand in his muscular but gentle clasp for a moment.
"Laura packed me off here to take some coffee," she said. "Does she know you are here? And how early you are abroad in the world. We are stirring about at this sunrise hour because we are going for a day in the country—and I am mad to get there! In my previous incarnation I must have been a milkmaid, for I dearly love the country." Then she added, with a little air of disappointment: "I do wish you were coming with us!"
"That," replied Blythe, smiling his wide smile as he poured coffee for her, "is precisely what I am going to do."
Louise, in the act of taking the cup from him, looked into his face with an expression of pleased mystification on her own.