Had Stephen Crowley desired exceedingly to secure Dirk's vote in favor to the proposed entertainment he could not, at that moment, have chosen a better way. Dirk tossed his thick mat of black hair in a defiant fashion and answered:—
“He needn't have a thing to do with it, so far as I care. I don't know who'll miss him; but if he thinks he's got all the fellows under his thumb, and they're goin' to do as he says, I'll show him a thing or two. I'm a goin' to-morrow night. I don't care what it is, nor what it is for. She was nice and friendly to us to-day, and I'm willin' to trust her to-morrow. I shall go up there and see what she does want. It can't kill a fellow to do that much.”
“Then I'm a goin', too,” declared Stephen, with decision. “Dick, he thinks there won't none of us go if he don't; and I'd just like to show him that he must get up early in the mornin' if he wants to keep track of us.”
If Dirk Colson needed anything to strengthen his resolution, there was material in that last sentence which supplied it. He had long chafed under the control of Dick Bolton; here was a chance to assert superiority. He even, just at that moment, conceived the brilliant idea of supplanting Dick—running an opposition party, as it were.
What if he should get every fellow in the class to promise to go, and Dick, the acknowledged leader, should find himself left out alone in the cold. The thought actually made his grim face break into a smile. Thus it came to pass that the most efficient worker for the success of the Monday evening entertainment, so far at least as securing the presence of the guests, was Dirk Colson.
In Mr. Roberts' mansion preparations for receiving and entertaining the hoped-for guests went briskly forward. Preparations which astonished the young guest already arrived.
“Are you really going to let them come in here?” she asked, as she followed Mrs. Roberts through the elegant parlors, and watched her putting delicate touches here and there.
“Certainly; why not? Don't you open your parlors when you receive your friends?”
“I don't think we have such peculiar friends on our list,” Gracie said, with a little laugh; and then, “Flossy, they will spoil your furniture.”
“If one evening in the Master's service will spoil anything it surely ought to be spoiled,” Mrs. Roberts answered, serenely.