"I 'm afraid I cut him out, just for once; kind of rough on him, but 't won't hurt him any to have a change. He 's had his own way a little too much," said Chi to himself.
Again there was music, a Schubert serenade, with the two violins, and after that, the children begged Hazel to dance the Highland Fling as she did once in the barn. Hazel, nothing loath, borrowed a blue Liberty-silk scarf from Ruth Ford; the rugs being removed and Alan Ford tuning his violin, she made her curtsy, and, entering heart and body into the spirit of the thing, danced like thistle-down shod with joyousness.
It was a pretty sight! and Chi edged into the room, while the company made believe ignore him in order to induce him to remain there; but when the singing began, he slipped out again. Such singing! Everybody joined in it. They sang everything;--"Oh, where, tell me where, is your Highland laddie gone?";--"Star-spangled Banner";--"Marching Along";--"John Anderson, my Jo";--"Ye banks and braes o' Bonnie Doon";--"Twinkle, twinkle, little star";--"Annie Laurie";--"A grasshopper sat on a sweet-potato vine";--"Ben Bolt";--"Fair Harvard" and, finally, "Old Hundred."
It had been arranged that Mr. Blossom should take his wife and the younger children home in the pung; the rest were to walk. Chi, meanwhile, had driven home in the single sleigh.
On the walk home Jack tried what he had been apt to term--of course, to himself--his "confidential scheme" with Rose. He had tried it before with many another, and it had never failed to work. The thought of one of his roses in Alan Ford's buttonhole still rankled, and the best side of Jack's manhood was not on the surface when he entered upon the homeward walk.
"Miss Blossom,"--somehow Jack had not quite the courage to say "Rose," although he had been so frankly invited to--"I want to tell you why I came up here; it must have seemed almost an intrusion."
"'I want to tell you why I came up here'"
"Oh, no, indeed," said Rose, earnestly, "and I know why you came; Hazel told me."
"Oh, she did," said Jack, rather inanely, and a little uncertain as to his footing, figuratively speaking; for he had given her the chance to ask "Why?"--and she had n't taken it; in which she proved herself different from all those other girls of his acquaintance. To himself he thought, "Well, for all the cordial indifference, commend me to this girl."