And because the breakfast went so well, they managed the dinner and the supper also.
“I have been thinking,” said Brian at the close of their evening meal, looking straight into the gray eyes over the table, “perhaps it might be better for you to stay at neighbor Tom's until Auntie Sue returns. I'll hitch up 'Old Prince' and drive you over, if you say. Or, we might find some neighbor woman to come here to live with us, if you prefer.”
“You don't like my housekeeping, then?” asked Betty Jo.
“Like it!” exclaimed Brian; and the tone of his voice approached the danger-point.
Betty Jo said quickly: “I'll tell you exactly what I think, Mr. Burns: Auntie Sue said we were to be good children, and take care of things until she returned. She did not say for me to shirk my part by going to neighbor Tom's or by having any one come here. Don't you think we can do exactly what Auntie Sue said?”
“Yes,” returned Brian, heartily; “I am sure we can. And do you know,—come to think about it,—I believe the dear old lady would be disappointed in us both if we dodged our—well,—” he finished with emphasis,—“our responsibilities.”
And after that, somehow, the evening on the porch went as well as the breakfast and dinner and supper had gone.
It was the second day of their housekeeping that Betty Jo noticed smoke coming from the stone chimney of the clubhouse up the river. She reported her observation to Brian when he came in from his work for dinner. During the afternoon, they both saw boats on the quiet waters of The Bend, and at supper told each other what they had seen. And in the evening they together watched the twinkling lights of the clubhouse windows, and once they heard voices and laughter from somewhere on the river as though a boating party were making merry.
Two days later, Brian and Betty Jo were just finishing dinner when a step sounded on the porch, and a man appeared in the open doorway.
The stranger was dressed in the weird and flashy costume considered by his class to be the proper thing for an outing in the country, and his face betrayed the sad fact that, while he was mentally, spiritually, and physically greatly in need of a change from the unclean atmosphere that had made him what he was, he was incapable of benefiting by more wholesome conditions of living. He was, in fact, a perfect specimen of that type of clubman who, in order to enjoy fully the beautiful life of God's unspoiled world, must needs take with him all of the sordid and vicious life of that world wherein he is most at home.