CHAPTER III
LUNCHEON AT THE LODGE
Wilderness Lodge, Cousin Jane had said, was a simple little place in the mountains, not a hotel but rather a club house where only certain people could go, and Maria Angelina had pictured a white stucco pension-hotel set against some background like the bare, bright hills of Italy.
She found a green smother of forest, an ocean of greenness with emerald crests rising higher and higher like giant waves, and at the end of the long motor trip the Lodge at last disclosed itself as a low, dark, rambling building, set in a clearing behind a blue bend of sudden river.
And built of logs! Did people of position live yet in logs in America? demanded the girl's secret astonishment as the motor whirled across the rustic bridge and stopped before the wide steps of a veranda full of people.
Springing down the steps, two at a time, came a tall, short-skirted girl in white.
"Dad—you came, too!" she cried. "Oh, that's bully. You must enter the tournament—Mother, did you remember about the cup and the—you know? What we talked of for the booby?"
She had a loud, gay voice like a boy's and as Maria was drawn into the commotion of greetings, she opened wide, half-intimidated eyes at the bigness and brownness of this Cousin Ruth.
She had expected Heaven knows what of incredible charm in the girl who had detached the Signor Bobby Martin from the siren Leila. Her instant wonder was succeeded by a sensation of gay relief. After all, these things went by chance and favor. . . . And if Bobby Martin could prefer this brown young girl to that vision at the restaurant why then—then perhaps there was also a chance for—what was it the young Signor Elder had called her? A petite brune wrapped in cotton wool.