"You must be having a real gay time up there!" Marcia Lowe replied, laughing at poor old Sally's indignation.
"Well, I'se cookin' mo' an' mo' monstrous every day. If that Yank can stan' what I have in store fo' him from now on, I reckon he don' got a stummick like a beast o' burden."
"Ah! poor Sandy," Cynthia cried; "you'll kill him, too. I reckon I'll come up and bring him food at night and put it in his study."
"Not just yet, little Cyn," Marcia Lowe replied, putting a protecting arm about the girl. "Cynthia's a bit run down," she explained to Sally; "off her feed a little. We're going to have a holiday. What do you think?—Mr. Greeley is going to take us 'over the hills and far away'—about twenty-five miles away! He's going over to make a will for an old man who is dying and he's invited us to share his carriage. Take good care of the Morleys, Sally, and let's hope the stranger will leave before we return. I'm getting real Southern in my tastes and am positively suspicious of Northerners!"
And it was a few nights after the night that Tod Greeley, with Marcia Lowe and Cynthia tucked comfortably away in the back seat of his carry-all, started on their trip, that Lans Treadwell and Sandy Morley sat before the fire in the study and had their talk—the talk that illumined the path on ahead for Sandy.
"Old fellow!" exclaimed Lans, taking the cushions from the window-seat and tossing them back again from where he stood in the middle of the room; "never place sofa pillows—chuck 'em! Only by so doing can you give that free and easy grace that distinguishes a Frat cosy corner from a drawingroom torture chamber."
Every cushion that Treadwell tossed seemed to strike with a thud on Sandy's heart. It was as if Treadwell were hurting little Cyn as she sat in her window-seat with her dear face turned toward them.
"Come, sit down, Lans. You are as nervous as a ghost-candle."
"Thanks!" Treadwell took a chair across the hearth from his host. "There's a devil of a storm rising out of doors."
"They're right common this season of the year. About six or seven years ago there was one up here that came mighty near ending the existence of a good many—it did carry one poor old darky woman away."