"And a mighty small fraction of the estate it is, I hope you understand!" growled Max.
But Sally went on without minding. Everybody was used to Max's growls. "And smiling because I couldn't help it just to think we had a chance at last to get out of the city. We can do it. Five miles by trolley is nothing for you boys, or for me, when I need to come in."
"You're not talking about our going to live out there!" Max's tone was derisive.
"Why not?"
"Have you seen the place lately?"
"Not since I was a little girl, but I remember I thought it was lovely then."
"It isn't lovely now, if it ever was—which I doubt. In the first place it belongs to that little suburb of Wybury—as commonplace a village as ever existed within five miles of as big a city as this. In the second place it's as much an abandoned farm as neglect can make a place that was once, I suppose, an aristocratic sort of country home. The old mansion is as big as a barn, and as hopeless. You couldn't any more make a home out of it!—Why, you could put this whole apartment into the room at the left of the hall!"
"How do you know so much about it?" demanded Sally. "None of us has been there since Aunt Alicia died—that was when we were children, and Uncle Maxwell used to spend his summers there."
"He hasn't spent them there since she died," Max asserted. "How do I know so much about it? I was down there last summer with Frank Sustis. His father sent him out to look the place over, with a view to buying it himself for a summer home. You should have heard Prank jeer at the idea while we were going about."
"It makes no difference," persisted Sally, removing her hat and folding the veil with care. "I want to see it. We'll go out to-morrow, won't we?"