"No," she said, "we weren't going anywhere."
"And you dressed like that just for a—treat for me?"
She nodded. "Just for you," she said. "Roddy, who are the Lakes? Oh, I know his articles, I think! But where were they friends of yours, and when?"
"Why, for years, until they moved to New York. They used to live here. I know I must have told you about them. I was always having dinner with them—either out in Rogers Park, where they lived, or at queer, terrible little restaurants down-town. They were always game to try anything, once. He's the longest, leanest, angularest, absent-mindedest chap in the world. And just about the best. And his wife fits all his angles. She's a good chap, too. That's the way you have to think of her. They're a great pair. She writes, too. Oh, you're sure to like them! They're going to be out here for months, he says. He's going to specialize in women, and he's come back here where they've got the vote and all, to make headquarters. Lord, but it's great! I haven't had a real talk with anybody since he went away, over a year ago!"
Then, at the sound of the bell, he cried out, "There they are!" and dashed down into the hall ahead of the parlor maid, as eagerly as a schoolboy anticipating a birthday present.
Rose followed more slowly, and by the time she had reached the landing she found him slapping Barry on the back and shaking both hands with Jane, and trying to help both of them out of their wraps at once.
The last thing she could have thought of just then, was of making, for herself, an effective entrance on the scene. But it worked out rather that way. The three of them, Rodney and the Lakes, at the foot of the stairs, in the clothes they had been working and traveling in all day, looked up simultaneously and saw Rose, gowned for a treat for Rodney, on the first landing; a wonderful rose-colored Boucher tapestry (guaranteed authentic by Bertie Willis) on the wall behind her for a background, and the carved Gothic newel-post bringing out the whiteness of the hand that rested upon it. The picture would have won a moment's silence from anybody. And Barry and Jane simply gazed at her wide-eyed.
