"Beryl Lynch, you are coming down or I won't stir one foot. You shall pick out one of my dresses and we'll make it longer or something. And I think a party with boys I don't know would be lots more terrible than an at-home. All I hope is that he makes the date soon so that it will be over with."
Percival Tubbs, inwardly much annoyed at having the peaceful routine of his days at the Manor thus disturbed, was as anxious as Robin to have the party over with. After due deliberation with Mrs. Budge he fixed the date for a day two weeks ahead. Mrs. Budge insisted she needed that much time to make "things look like anything."
Budge and Harkness welcomed the party as a beginning of the "change" they had prayed might come to Gray Manor.
"It'll be some'at like old times," Harkness had declared.
"That chit won't look like much," (poor Budge had not yet forgiven Robin for being a girl) "but it'll make talk if she ain't shown. Talk enough for Madame going away like she did. I've half a mind to get out the gold plate. That old Mis' Crosswaithe from Sharon'll be over here the first of any, peeking around and she ain't going to see how things are going to sixes and sevens. No one else ain't either or my name ain't Hannah Budge. It ain't." And Budge squared her shoulders as a challenge to an inquisitive world.
Harkness, while he anxiously watched the weather, grew loquacious over the old times. "This house has known great parties, missy," he told Robin. "The best lydies from miles 'round coming in their carriages. The Crosswaithes, from Sharon, before old Mr. Crosswaithe died. And the Cullens and the Grangers—she as was the daughter of a gov'nor. The Manor was the finest place in the county and things were done right here and as gay as could be." He launched forth on a long description of Christopher the Third's eighteenth birthday party. "He come up from school, missy, with his friends and the young lydies come from New York and some from these parts and the house was as gay, what with flowers and palms and music and their talk. And the young master's table was laid in the conservatory—and the olders sat in the dining-room and Held come from New York—the best caterer, missy—"
Robin and Beryl listened with breathless interest—Robin with a moment's vision of that handsome lad laughing and talking with the "young lydies from New York." How dreadful, she thought, that only a few months after that brilliant affair he should have been killed—he would have been about twenty-four, now—and would have been such a splendid Forsyth, while she was so small and insignificant.
"These automobiles are all very well, missy, but if it snows—" and Harkness scowled through the window at the darkening sky.
"Do you mean, if it snows—no one will come?"
"I'm not thinking that, missy, but not so many—the Grangers and their young people."