"We've got to hurry back if we beat that cloud yonder," declared Williams, nodding toward a gathering bank of dark clouds in the western sky, and the mention of snow brought back to the girls the approaching party.
It did snow—long before Williams reached the Manor, so that the car was covered; throughout the dinner Harkness went again and again to the window to peer out, always turning back with the worried announcement: "It's still coming down." And at bedtime Robin, peeping out, saw a world blanketed white. Even Mr. Tubbs laid his neuralgic head upon his soft pillow with the regretful thought: "Now the Grangers cannot come. A pity. Yes."
CHAPTER XV
THE PARTY
The household at Gray Manor looked upon the heavy fall of snow with varying emotions. Harkness lamented loudly: "It might 'a held off for Missy's party. If it was the old days—well, the county lydies could a' come in their sleighs. All right as far as the post road goes, but the Grangers—"
Downstairs Budge rejoiced that the Grangers might not come. "Eyes like a ferret that woman has and like as not she never got over our boy's going. She'd say things was going to sixes and sevens, with a little thing no bigger'n a penny in our boy's shoes—she would. But I'd like to know who ever'll eat all the stuff I'm fixing!" The house cleaned to a fine polish from attic to cellar, Mrs. Budge had turned her attention most generously to the food.
"Why does everyone care about Mrs. Granger?" asked Robin, of Harkness, when even Percival Tubbs regretted, with a sigh, that Mrs. Granger might not find it possible to come.
"Well, you might say she's next lydy to Madame herself," explained Harkness. "In the old days her people and the Manor people were thick like and visited backward and forward. And there was talk of young Christopher some day marrying the young lydy, Miss Alicia. I hear tell his death was a sad blow to them. They haven't been coming much to the Manor since, but we laid it to Madame's queer ways and the gloom."