“I think there is no danger, sir. I will tell the chef to throw out no table-scraps, and to feed that big dog we have brought in the back kitchen. Then there will be nothing to attract the wild creatures to the door.”
“Good idea,” Mr. Howbridge said. “And I will warn them all tomorrow not to leave the vicinity of the Lodge alone. When Ike M’Graw arrives we shall be all right. This vicinity is his natural habitat, and he will know all that’s right to do, and what not to do.”
Mr. Howbridge still looked about the room. The thing that interested him most was the mystery of the intruder who had built the fire in the grate. Mrs. Birdsall’s sitting-room! And the lawyer knew from hearing the story repeated again and again by the sorrowing widower, that the woman had been brought in here after her fall from the horse and had died upon the couch in the corner of the room.
He wondered.
Meanwhile the crowd of young people below were comforted with tea and crackers before they went to their bedrooms to change their clothes for dinner. Mr. Howbridge had brought the customs of his own formal household to Red Deer Lodge, and, knowing how particular the lawyer was, Ruth Kenway had warned the others to come prepared to dress for dinner.
Mrs. MacCall, after drinking her third cup of tea, went off with the chief maid to view the house and learn something about it. The Scotch woman was very capable and had governed Mr. Howbridge’s own home before she went to the old Corner House to keep straight the household lines there for the Kenways.
Her situation here at the Lodge was one between the serving people and the family; but the latter, especially the smaller girls, would have been woeful indeed had Mrs. MacCall not sat at the table with them and been one of the family as she was at home in Milton.
The girls were shown to their two big rooms on the second floor, and found them warm and cozy. They were heated by wood fires in drum-stoves. Ike M’Graw, general caretaker of the Lodge, had long since piled each wood box in the house full with billets of hard wood.
Neale and Luke and Sammy were given another room off the gallery above the main hall. There they washed, and freshened up their apparel, and otherwise made themselves more presentable. Even Sammy looked a little less grubby than usual when they came down to the big fire again.
It was black dark outside by this time. The wind was still moaning in the forest, and when they went to the door the fugitive snowflakes drifted against one’s cheek.