“Going to be a bad night, I guess,” Neale said, coming back from an observation, just as the girls came down the stairway. “Oh, look! see ’em all fussed up!”
The girls had shaken out their furbelows, and now came down smiling and preening not a little. Mr. Howbridge appeared in a Tuxedo coat.
“Wish I’d brought my ‘soup to nuts,’” admitted Luke Shepard. “This is going to be a dress-up affair. I thought we were coming into the wilderness to rough it.”
“All the roughing it will be done outside the house, young man,” said Cecile to her brother. “You must be on your very best behavior inside.”
Hedden’s assistant announced dinner, and Mr. Howbridge offered his arm to Mrs. MacCall, who had just descended the stairway in old-fashioned rustling black silk.
Immediately Luke joined the procession with Ruth on his arm, and Neale followed with Agnes, giggling of course. Cecile made Sammy walk beside her, and he was really proud to do this, only he would not admit it. At the end of the procession came the two little girls.
They had not seen the dining-room before. It was big enough for a banquet hall, and the table without being extended would have seated a dozen. There was an open fireplace on either side of this room. The acetylene lamps gave plenty of light. There were favors at each plate. There were even flowers on the table. Aside from the unplastered walls and raftered ceiling, one might have thought this dinner served in Mr. Howbridge’s own home.
They all (the older ones at least) began to realize how great a cross it would have been for the lawyer to take into his home in Milton two harum-scarum children like the Birdsall twins. If all tales about them were true, they were what Neale O’Neil called “terrors.”
Such children would surely break every rule of the lawyer’s well-ordered existence. And bachelors of Mr. Howbridge’s age do not take kindly to changes.
“Think of bringing the refinements of his own establishment away up here into the woods for a three weeks’ vacation!” gasped Cecile afterwards to Ruth.