“Marian is a persuasive person, I imagine,” the Poet remarked. “By the way, I shall be a little late arriving. Myers, the artist, lives a little farther down Audubon Road and I want to have a look at his summer’s work. Nice fellow; good workman. Redfield promised to meet me there; I want to be sure he doesn’t run away. We don’t want the party spoiled after all the work we’ve done on it.”
“I wonder,” Mrs. Redfield remarked, over the tea-table, “who has bought the place?”
“A trust company, I think,” replied Fulton, glancing through the broad north window of the studio with careful dissimulation. “As I passed the other day I saw that the grounds had been put in order, and decided that this would be just the place for a picnic.”
“This little house would be nice for my playhouse; and we could use that big window to watch ums knights come widing.”
“That chimney used to roar the way you read about,” remarked Marian. “I think every house ought to have a detached place like this, for tea and sewing and children to play in.”
Mrs. Redfield, ill at ease, was attending listlessly to the talk. Fulton’s explanation had not wholly explained. She had agreed to the excursion only after Marjorie had clamorously insisted upon the outing her devoted cavalier had proposed. Marjorie’s comments upon the broad yard, her childish delight in the studio playhouse, touched chords of memory that jangled harshly.
Fulton was in high spirits. His romance had been accepted and a representative of the publishing house was coming to confer with him about illustrations.
“They say it won’t break any best-selling records, but it will give me a start. The scoundrels had the cheek to suggest that I cut out some of my jingles, but I scorned such impiousness in an expensive telegram.”
“I should hope so!” cried Marian approvingly. “The story’s only an excuse for the poems. Even the noblest prose wouldn’t express the lake, the orchard, and the fields; if you cut out your verses, there wouldn’t be much left but a young gentleman spraying apple trees and looking off occasionally at the girls paddling across the lake.”