"Perhaps he'll invite you," Fred said.
But Flora's hopes did not rise to such a height. "If he doesn't come in to-night, I'll send him a reg'ler written invitation to a movie," she said, happily.
CHAPTER XVII
As things turned out, Flora might have seen her "friend" in Payton Street Friday night, had devotion prompted him to call, for the festivity at the camp was postponed for three days. The morning mail brought Frederica a brief line from Howard Maitland; he had found, he said, after he left her office, that he had to run on to Philadelphia. Back Monday morning. If her invitation held good, he'd come out to Lakeville for supper Monday night. The letter ended with some scratched-out words, which looked like, "I may have something to tell you—" The obliterated line made her glow! But the delay was disappointing. Three whole days before she could hear that "something" he wanted to tell her—and she wanted to hear! Well, it would give her more time to fix things up in the cottage. With this in view, she and Zip and Flora went out to Lakeville Sunday morning, and Fred had a silent day to keep an eye on the dusting, and work on her suffrage paper, and jolly Flora, whose plaintive dullness was beginning to be rather trying.
"You must brace up, Flora," she said; "you haven't half dusted the legs of the table! I don't want Mr. Maitland to think we are not good housekeepers, just because we are 'New Women,' you and I!" But Flora did not brighten. She had telephoned the "reg'ler invitation to the movies" before leaving Payton Street, but the "friend" had only said (she told Frederica) "he'd see 'bout it. He'll write to me, and I'll git it Monday," she said. But it was evident that she had very little hope of an acceptance.
All that pleasant, hazy Sunday Frederica followed the old, old example of her grandmother, the cave-dweller, and decked her little shelter. She went into the woods and brought back an armful of maple leaves and, with Flora's melancholy assistance, fastened them against the walls and over the doors, hiding, to some extent, the frieze of fans and the yellow pennons of the Cause. She even took down the muslin curtains and washed and ironed them herself, and put them up again, crisp and dainty. The little room bloomed with her joy. When she sat down to "polish" her article she kept jumping up every few minutes to move a bowl of flowers, or put an extra book on the mantelpiece.
"I wonder," she thought, "if he can read the titles from that morris chair?" She had decided in what chair he was to sit. She tried the visual possibilities of the chair herself and, by screwing up her eyes, found she could just make out the appallingly learned names on the backs of some of the books. "That will show him what I'm up to!" she said.
It was the old Life Purpose—the eternal invitation! The bird preens itself, the flower pours its perfume, the girl's cheek curves like a shell. A man can almost always see the beckoning of that rosy curve, or of a little curl nestling at the back of a white neck, or of soft, shy eyes; for so, in all the ages, Life has invited. But it has never beckoned with a German treatise!