CHAPTER IX
MAX COMPROMISES
"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Maxwell Lane. "I'll compromise. If Sally and the rest of you will let up on your nonsensical plan of staying in this barracks all winter, I'll agree to stick it out till—November."
He encountered Sally's gaze. They were all upon the great, high-columned porch which gave to the front of the house its impressive air of being an old family mansion. It was a fortnight after the tent party—a fine August evening. Josephine and Jarvis Burnside had just driven out, and Donald Ferry, seeing them come, had strolled over. So not only Sally, but six other people, were hanging on Max's decision.
He had meant to say "till October." But as he met his sister's eyes it occurred to him that a compromise, which offered one month instead of six, might perhaps be considered a trifle too one-sided to be accepted as a compromise at all. So he finished the sentence, after a perceptible pause, with "till November." That, surely, was being generous, he considered. Just why all decisions should be made by him, as supreme arbiter, can hardly be explained, except that he had assumed that position three years before, when the other young Lanes had been negligible factors in all matters of business, and he, by the divine right of his twenty-one years, had, upon the death of his father, taken the management of the family affairs into his own hands.
Sally drew a long breath of relief. Anyhow, she now had more than two months' reprieve. By the end of that period something might happen to make Max willing to extend it. The tent had been put up again, and all but Max had returned to sleeping in it. He had announced that he cared to take no more chances with thunderstorms and cyclones, so Sally had arranged comfortable quarters for him in the house, in one of the smaller downstairs rooms, looking out upon the grove. There was a fireplace in this room, and Bob had placed a well-stocked wood-box beside it, so that his brother might have no excuse for feeling himself neglected.
"Your compromise gives you so much the bigger half of the bargain," said Josephine, her brilliant dark eyes fixed on Max, "that I think you ought to give Sally something to boot. Isn't that the word?"
"What does she want? The house furnished for the two months?"
"Much simpler than that. Sally and I want to have our friends out for a frolic."
"In an empty house?"