“If you really want my advice,” said Bruce after a moment’s deliberation, “I’d take a little more time to this. Before you could get your plans we’ll be having rough weather. I’d wait till spring, when you can develop your grounds and complete the whole thing at once. And it would be just as well to look around a bit—visit other cities and get the newest ideas.”
“You think that? I supposed there’d be time to get the foundations in if I started right away.”
“I wouldn’t risk it; in fact I think it would be a serious mistake.”
“Well, you are probably right,” assented Shepherd, though reluctantly, and there was a plaintive note in his voice. “Thanks ever so much. I guess I’ll take your advice. I’ll let it go till spring.”
“Damon and Pythias couldn’t look more brotherly!” Constance Mills stood at the doorway viewing them with her languid smile. “It peeves me a good deal, Mr. Storrs, that you prefer my husband’s society to mine.”
“This is business, Connie,” Shepherd said. “We’ve just finished.”
“Let’s say the party is just beginning,” said Bruce. “I was just coming out to look you up.”
“I can’t believe it! But Leila just telephoned for us to come out to Deer Trail and bring any of Dale’s crowd who look amusing. That includes you, of course, Mr. Storrs. Everyone’s gone but Helen Torrence and Fred Thomas and Arthur Carroll. Mr. Mills is at the farm; it’s a fad of his to have Sunday supper in the country. Leila hates it and sent out an S. O. S., so we can’t desert her. No, Mr. Storrs, you can’t duck! Millicent is there—that may add to the attractions!”
This with a meaningful glance at Bruce prompted him to say that Miss Harden’s presence hardly diminished the attractions of the farm. There was real comedy in his inability to extricate himself from the net in which he constantly found himself enmeshed with the members of the house of Mills.
In discussing who had a car and who hadn’t, Freeman said his machine was working badly, to which Shepherd replied that there was plenty of room in his limousine for the Freemans and any others who were carless.