Louis sprang up to offer Judge Gray the chair he had been occupying—a favourite, luxuriously cushioned armchair, with a reading light beside it ready to be switched on at will, which was Uncle Calvin's special treasure, of an evening. Louis himself took up his position on the hearth-rug, opposite Rosamond.
Aunt Ruth answered her brother energetically: "None happier, Calvin, I'll warrant, and few half as happy. I can't help wishing those two people Rufus and I've been visiting could look in here just now."
"Why make them envious?" suggested Louis, who loved to hear his Aunt
Ruth's crisp speeches.
"The question is—would they be envious?" This came from Stephen, whose absorption in his book evidently admitted of penetration from the outside.
"Why, of course they would!" declared Aunt Ruth. "You should have seen the way they had me pour the coffee and tea, all the while I was there. That young man Richard was always getting me to pour something—said he liked to see me do it. And he was always sending a servant off and doing things for me himself. If I'd been a young girl he couldn't have hovered round any more devotedly."
A general laugh greeted this, for Aunt Ruth's expression of face as she told it was provocative.
"We can readily believe that, Ruth," declared Judge Gray, and his brother Robert nodded. The low-voiced talk between Mr. Robert Gray and his wife had ceased; Stephen had laid down his book; Ruth had stopped plucking at her harp strings; and only Roberta still seemed interested in anything but Aunt Ruth and her experiences and opinions.
"I mended his socks and gloves for him," announced Aunt Ruth contentedly. "You needn't tell me they don't miss a woman's hand about the house, over there."
"She mended Rich Kendrick's socks and gloves!" murmured Louis, with a laughing, incredulous glance at Rosamond, who lifted delighted eyes to him. "I can't believe it. He must have made holes in them on purpose."
"Why, not even a spendthrift would do that!" Aunt Ruth promptly denied the possibility of such folly. "I don't say but they are lavish with things there. Rufus and I were a good deal bothered by all their lights. We couldn't seem to get them all put out. And every time we put them out, anywhere, somebody'd turn them on again for us."