“Order the big car,” Mr. Mitchell said; “we are going down to the station to meet some guests!”
“Yees, sir!” Baptiste answered as he turned to finish his duties at the server.
“Well, that’s that,” Mr. Mitchell was saying. “We’ll get the envelope out of the tin box in the safe to-morrow and give those people what’s coming to them!”
At that juncture the butler glanced at Mr. Mitchell and left the room.
“Say, Dad, I was telling Westy it’d be good fun to have him wait here until we get back and surprise his friends. It’ll be more friendly when they come in to see him, don’t you think?”
“Certainly!” Mrs. Mitchell said.
“Go up in the library while we’re gone and read what you like. You can roam all over the house if you want to,” Mr. Mitchell added.
Young Mitchell took him up in the library and showed him what was most interesting, so five minutes after they had all left for the station Westy was comfortably ensconced in a big library chair. It was so big it completely hid him from view and he browsed to his heart’s content.
The big house was silent; the kitchen noises had stopped and he could hear the two servants padding up the back stairway to their rooms. A little later he heard them go down again—a door closed somewhere in the back and the sounds of two pair of feet stepping along the gravel driveway reminded him that Sunday night was the servants’ night.
A clock chimed the quarter of the hour and then the house lapsed into silence again.