"They'll keep him or eat him, if I know old Cookie."
Jerry—a pleasing figure to contemplate in white lawn and blue ribbons—suggested that the meeting take place in the library, as more like an imperial council chamber; but Ardmore warmly dissented from this. A peace should never be signed, he maintained, in so large a house as Ardsley. At Appomattox and in many other cases that he recalled, the opponents met in humble farmhouses. It would be well, however, to have the meeting on the estate, for the property would thus become historic, but it would never do to have it take place in the Ardsley library.
"There should be great difficulty in securing pens and paper," Ardmore continued, "and we must decline to accept the swords of our fallen foes."
They finally agreed on the red bungalow as convenient and sufficiently modest for the purpose. And so it was arranged.
A few minutes before five the flag of North Carolina was hung from the wide veranda of the bungalow. At the door stood an armed militiaman. Colonel Daubenspeck had been invited to be present, and he appeared accompanied by several other officers in full uniform. Word of the meeting place had been sent through the lines to the enemy, and the messenger rode back with Griswold, who was followed quickly by the adjutant-general of South Carolina and half a dozen other officers. The guard saluted as Griswold ran up the steps of the veranda, and at the door Ardmore met him and greeted him formally.
At the end of a long table Jerry Dangerfield sat with her arms folded. She wore, as befitting the occasion, a gray riding-dress and a gray felt hat perched a trifle to one side.
She bowed coldly to Griswold, whose hand, as he surveyed the room and glanced out at the flag that fluttered in the doorway, went to his mustache with that gesture that Ardmore so greatly disliked; but Griswold again bowed gravely to his adversaries.
"Miss Dangerfield, and gentlemen," began Griswold, with an air of addressing a supreme tribunal, "I believe this whole matter depends upon the arrest of one Appleweight, a well-known outlaw of North Carolina—"
"I beg your pardon—"
It was Jerry who interrupted him, her little fists clenching, a glint of fire in her eyes.