There were some beds, though, two or three spare ones, Rush was sure, that had never been used. Given a day's start on his guests, he would promise some sort of building which, if they would refrain from inquiring too closely into its past, should serve to house them.
"A wood-shed," she suggested helpfully, "or a nicely swept-out hennery.
Even a former cow stable, at a pinch. Only not a pig-pen."
"If our new hog-house were only finished, you could be absolutely palatial in it. But I think I can do better than any of those. You leave that to me.—Only, how about Aunt Lucile? She's—essential to the scheme, I suppose. Can you deliver her?"
"She'll come if it's put to her right,—as a sporting proposition. She really is a good sport you know, the dear old thing. You leave her to me."
"Lord, I feel a lot better than I did when I sat down to dinner," he told her when they parted for the night, and left her reflecting on the folly of making mountains out of mole-hills.
CHAPTER XIII
LOW HANGS THE MOON
He broke his promise to be waiting for them Friday morning at the farm. It was Graham who caught sight of their car, as it stopped in front of the farm-house, and came plunging down the bank to greet them and explain how unavoidable it had been that Rush should go to Elgin.
He was somewhat flushed and a little out of breath but he seemed, after the first uncomfortable minute, collected enough. He mounted the running-board and directed the chauffeur to drive on across the bridge and fork to the right with the main road up to a small nondescript building on the far side of it.
It was a part of the farm, he explained, indicating the wilderness off to the left,—a part of what must once have been a big apple orchard. Indeed, exploring it yesterday for the first time, he had found a surprising number of old trees, which, choked as they were with undergrowth, looked as if they were still bearing fruit. The building, which they had never even entered until yesterday, had served as a sorting and packing house for the crop, though the old part of it—paradoxically the upper part—appeared to have been built as a dwelling by some pioneer settler. A second story had been added underneath by digging out the bank.