“To C. V. Grantham, Yonkers, N. Y.—Train stalled. Don’t expect us till morning.
Wes.”
If the girls looked relieved for a moment they certainly showed regret the next, especially Minnie Trumbull; but she said nothing. Ella Bromley, on the contrary, exclaimed in great vexation:
“What a shame! For two whole days I’ve been promising myself such a time teasing that scamp Dick almost to death. I think it’s too bad.”
“Never mind,” replied Sadie; “you will have four days in which to work out your horrible purpose. Why, is not slow torture better than killing him off in one night?”
“Why, girls! How can you stand there joking,” spoke up Grace Waldron, “while those poor boys are slowly freezing to death in the middle of a snow bank?”
“Nonsense!” replied Maud. “Where there’s a telegraph office there must be a station and a stove. It is too bad, indeed, that Wes and Dick must miss the little surprise party. But come along! I’ve done everything to help out for a jolly time. There’s the supper—I’ve had that all fixed, and I’ve told John we wouldn’t want him, so he’s gone off to bed, I suppose. Then mamma and papa have gone to the Bruces’ musicale, so there isn’t a soul in the house to disturb. Isn’t that just delightful?”
With a deafening din of joyous exclamations they followed Maud Grantham into the music room, and there all the evening they played games, and gossiped, and danced and sang, totally unsuspicious of the grave proceedings that were taking place within sound of their voices.
While this festive event was in progress Wesley and Richard Grantham, the sons of a wealthy New York banker, were really speeding on toward their home by the Eastern express. About four o’clock in the afternoon they had run into a snow drift just after drawing away from the station at Hudson. Things had looked for a time as if they were to be held in that town over night: so, when the train had backed to the station they had sent the telegram to their father. But when they saw a crowd of laborers file off with spades and shovels toward the deep drift, they had followed and watched the work, done in the faint light of many lamps; and they had of course chafed and grumbled, as well they might at being delayed on the eve of a school holiday and almost at the threshold of their luxurious home, quite oblivious of the fortunate outcome of the delay.