“All of them?” asked Dorothy, eagerly, as Miss St. Clair strolled into the front yard.
Harlan’s brow clouded and he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. “I don’t know,” he said, slowly, “whether I’ve got nerve enough to order a woman out of my house or not. Let’s wait and see what happens.”
A sob choked Dorothy, and she ran swiftly into the house, fortunately meeting no one on her way to her room. Dick ventured out of the barn and came up to Harlan, who was plainly perplexed.
“Very, very mild arrival,” commented Mr. Chester, desiring to put his host at his ease. “I’ve never known ’em to come so peacefully as they have to-day. Usually there’s more or less disturbance.”
“Disturbance,” repeated Harlan. “Haven’t we had a disturbance to-day?”
“We have not,” answered Dick, placidly. “Wait till young Ebeneezer and Rebecca get more accustomed to their surroundings, and then you’ll have a Fourth of July every day, with Christmas, Thanksgiving, and St. Patrick’s Day thrown in. Willie is the worst little terror that ever went unlicked, and the twins come next.”
“Perhaps you don’t understand children,” remarked Harlan, with a patronising air, and more from a desire to disagree with Dick than from anything else. “I’ve always liked them.”
“If you have,” commented Dick, with a knowing chuckle, “you’re in a fair way to get cured of it.”
“Tell me about these people,” said Harlan, ignoring the speech, and dominated once more by healthy human curiosity. “Who are they and where do they come from?”
“They’re dwellers from the infernal regions,” explained Dick, with an air of truthfulness, “and they came from there because the old Nick turned ’em out. They were upsetting things and giving the place a bad name. Mrs. Holmes says she’s Aunt Rebecca’s cousin, but nobody knows whether she is or not. She’s come here every Summer since Aunt Rebecca died, and poor old uncle couldn’t help himself. He hinted more than once that he’d enjoy her absence if she could be moved to make herself scarce, but it had no more effect than a snowflake would in the place she came from. The most he could do was to build a wing on the house with a separate kitchen and dining-room in it, and take his own meals in the library, with the door bolted.