“Glad you liked it, Miss Sumner. I dare to hope that I may have the privilege of seeing you soon again.”
“Of course. One good pie deserves another. Some evening next week, when that dear old daddy of yours can spare his boy, you might be interested to see our burl-redwood-panelled dining room Uncle Seth is so proud of. I'm too recent an arrival to know the hour at which Uncle Seth dines, but I'll let you know later and name a definite date. Would Thursday night be convenient?”
“Perfectly. Thank you a thousand times.”
She bade him good-night. As he turned from the telephone, his father looked up. “What are you going to do to-morrow, lad?” he queried.
“I have to do some thinking to-morrow,” Bryce answered. “So I'm going up into Cardigan's Redwoods to do it. Up there a fellow can get set, as it were, to put over a thought with a punch in it.”
“The dogwoods and rhododendron are blooming now,” the old man murmured wistfully. Bryce knew what he was thinking of. “I'll attend to the flowers for Mother,” he assured Cardigan, and he added fiercely: “And I'll attend to the battle for Father. We may lose, but that man Pennington will know he's been in a fight before we fin—-”
He broke off abruptly, for he had just remembered that he was to dine at the Pennington house the following Thursday—and he was not the sort of man who smilingly breaks bread with his enemy.