“That settles it,” said the doctor, and led the retreat, but not without a backward glance at the little kitchen.
Juliet had gone into the dining-room with a trayful of glass and silver. Rachel Redding was plunging half a dozen white towels into a pan of steaming water. Barnes stood an instant, staring hard at the slender figure in the white pinafore, the round young arms gleaming in the lamplight—then he turned to follow the others. There are some pictures which linger long in a man’s memory; why, he can hardly tell. With all his varied experiences Dr. Roger Barnes had never before discovered how attractive a background a well-kept kitchen makes for a beautiful woman, so that she be there mistress of the situation. Long after he had gone back to the fire his absent eyes, while the others talked, were studying the—to him—unaccustomed and singularly charming scene he had just left in the kitchen.
When Juliet and Rachel came in at length they found a plan afoot for their entertainment. Wayne Carey was standing at the window showing cause why the whole party should go out and coast upon the hill near by.
“You admit,” he argued with Anthony, “that you know where we can get a pair of bobs—and if you can’t I’ll bribe some of those youngsters out there to let us have theirs. The storm has stopped; the boys have swept off the whole hill, I should judge, by the way their track shines again under the moonlight. I haven’t had a good coast since I left college.”
He turned to Juliet. “Will you go?” he asked coaxingly.
“Of course we will,” promised Juliet. “Tony wants to go—he’s just enjoying making you tease. As for the doctor——”
“If my right hand has not forgot her cunning,” he agreed.
In ten minutes the party was off. A young matron of five months’ standing is not so materially changed from the girl she used to be that she can fail to be the gayest of company, perhaps with the more zest that the old good times seem a bit far away already and she is glad to bring them back.
As for the real girl of the party, in this case it chanced to be a country lass who had been away to school and half-way through college, had been brought home by love and duty to some elderly people who needed her, and had known many hours of stifled longing for the sort of companionship with which she had grown happily familiar.
Matron and maid—they were a pair for whose sakes the men who were with them gladly made slaves of themselves to give them an evening of glorious outdoor fun—and at small sacrifice.