"I know it. I have just telephoned Miller to get Kemp from Westgate for them. Is that all right?"
"Yes"—she hesitated—"I think so."
"Let Kemp guide them," he insisted. "They'll never hold out as far as Cloudy Mountain. All they want is to shoot a boar, no matter how big it is. Miller says the boar are feeding again near the Green Pass. It's easy enough to send them there."
"Do you think that is perfectly hospitable? Rosalie and Delancy may find it rather stupid going off alone together with only Kemp to amuse them. I am fond of him," she added, "but you know what a woman like Rosalie is prone to think of Delancy."
He glanced at her keenly; she had, evidently, not the slightest notion of the status quo.
"Oh, they'll get along together, all right," he said carelessly. "If they choose to remain with us, of course we all can keep on to Cloudy Mountain; but you'll see them accept Kemp and the Green Pass with grateful alacrity after two miles of snow-shoeing through the brush; and we'll have the mountain all to ourselves."
"You're a shameless deviser of schemes, aren't you, dear?" she asked, considering him with that faint, intimate smile, which, however, had always in it something of curiosity. "You know perfectly well we could drive those poor people the whole way to Cloudy Mountain."
"Why, that is so!" he exclaimed, pretending surprise; "but, after all, dear, it's better sport to beat up the alders below Green Pass and try to jump a pig for them. That's true hospitality——"
She laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, Duane, Duane!" she murmured, suffering him to capture both her hands and lay them against his face to cover the glee that twitched it at his own unholy perfidy.
And so it came about that, after an early luncheon, a big double sleigh jingled up, received its jolly cargo, and sped away again into the white woodlands, Kathleen waving adieu and Scott deriding them with scoffing and snowballs.