Mrs. Pickering drove over from Nottonby—Kitty was married two years before to a well-to-do farmer at Northallerton—and someone rallied her on “bein’ ower good-lookin’ te remain a widow all her days.”
She laughed pleasantly.
“I’m far too busy at Wetherby to think of adding a husband to my cares,” she said; but those who knew her best could have told that she had refused at least two excellent offers of matrimony and meant to remain Mrs. Pickering during the rest of her days.
At the close of the second day’s sale, when the crowd was thinned by the departure of a fleet of cars and a local train at five o’clock, the White House was thronged by its habitués, who came to make a meal of the “high tea.”
Colonel Grant and John had just concluded an amicable wrangle whereby it was decided that they should jointly provide the considerable sum needed to acquire The Elms and some adjoining land. The house and grounds were to be remodeled and the property would be deeded to Martin forthwith.
The young gentleman himself, as tall as his father now, and wearing riding breeches and boots, was standing at the front door, turning impatient eyes from a smart cob, held by a groom, to the bend in the road where it curved beyond the “Black Lion.”
A smartly-dressed young lady passed, and although Martin lifted his hat with a ready smile his glance wandered from her along the road again. Evelyn Atkinson wondered who it was that thus distracted his attention.
A few yards farther on, Elsie Herbert, mounted on a steady old hunter, passed at a sharp trot. Evelyn’s pretty face frowned slightly.
“If she is home again, of course, he has eyes for nobody else,” she said to herself.