"Here comes your brother," she said. "I wish he wouldn't glower at me so! I really am not such a terrible person as he seems to think."
John muttered a word or two of polite but unconvincing protest. They stood together awaiting his approach. Stephen had apparently lost none of his dourness of the previous night. He was dressed in gray homespun, with knickerbockers and stockings of great thickness. He wore a flannel shirt and collar and a black wisp of a tie. Underneath his battered felt hat his weather-beaten face seemed longer and grimmer than ever, his mouth more uncompromising. As he looked toward Louise, there was no mistaking the slow dislike in his steely eyes.
"Your chauffeur, madam, has just returned," he announced. "He sent word that he will be ready to start at one o'clock."
Louise, inspired to battle by the almost provocative hostility of her elder host, smiled sweetly upon him.
"You can't imagine how sorry I am to hear it," she said. "I don't know when, in the whole course of my life, I have met with such a delightful adventure or spent such a perfect morning!"
Stephen looked at her with level disapproving eyes—at her slender form in its perfectly fitting tailored gown; at her patent shoes, so obviously unsuitable for her surroundings, and at the faint vision of silk stockings.
"If I might say so without appearing inhospitable," he remarked, with faint sarcasm, "this would seem to be the fitting moment for your departure. A closer examination of our rough life up here might alter your views."
She turned toward John, and caught the deprecating glance which flashed from him to Stephen.
"Your brother is making fun of me," she declared. "He looks at me and judges me just as I believe he would judge most people—sternly and without mercy. After all, you know, even though I am a daughter of the cities, there is another point of view—ours. Can you not believe that the call which prompts men and women to do the things in life which are really worth while is heard as often amid the hubbub of the city as in the solitude of these austere hills?"
"The question is a bootless one," Stephen answered firmly. "The city calls to its own, as the country holds its children, and both do best in their own environment. Like to like, and each bird to his own nest. You would be as much out of place here with us, madam, as my brother and I on the pavements of your city."