And after that brief speech Mrs. Scollard's last doubt of Laura's welfare in these hands finally vanished.
It was not half after nine when the von Siegeslieds went away. Bob rushed out to the kitchen and beat a tattoo on the opposite dumb waiter door. Snigs responded in the preliminary stages of preparation for bed.
"Get your collar on—or don't if you are opposed to doing it—but get Ralph anyway, and come on over here," Bob said. "We're having upheavals, and I'm not perfectly certain whether I half like it. We've got news for you—tell your mother to come, and I'll go around and lower the drawbridge for you to get in."
Bob shut the dumb waiter door with emphasis and without delaying to learn whether or not Snigs was going to act on his suggestion.
"I've called the Gordons," Bob said, explaining his haste to reach the door, as he passed the parlor.
The Gordons came, the mother also, and the Scollards poured out their budget of news. Laura was to sail for Germany in less than two weeks. The tea room was to be given up, with the dancing school of the former Mrs. Stewart. But—and this was not wholly pleasant tidings—the Patty-Pans flat was to be abandoned, and the Scollards were to make one family with Miss Bradbury in the house she had taken much farther down in town.
Ralph, who had been standing to receive all these amazing items, forgot manners and dropped on a chair, astride of it, his chin resting on its back. Gloom, nay, positive consternation was on his face.
"You're not!" he gasped. "You're not going to move from here!"
"We are going to keep a hold on the Patty-Pans by letting it pass into the hands of some one I know," said Miss Keren. She did not say that she was going to lease the flat for the Mrs. Leland who was coming into it, because Miss Keren never spoke of her good deeds. "And Ralph, you and Snigs are going to spend the entire summer in the Ark, the guests of Gretta, as proprietor, and of me as householder. We are not going to be separated, dear Gordon boys!"
Ralph's expression of dismay hardly lightened. "It can't be the same," he said, and his voice was husky. "Look at to-night, how Bob called us over to tell us the news! There's a big difference between being across a narrow passage and being four miles apart—especially in winter. We've got to stay right where we are for four years more. This is too near Columbia for us to move. And when I get through college there will be Snigs still struggling to acquire learning! We couldn't do better than to stay in our flat. Imagine us in it and other people in here!"