"I don't want a million."
"Oh," she appealed to Brinsley Tyson, "what can you do with a man like that—without red blood—without ambition?"
And now it was Richard who flamed. "I am ambitious enough, Eve, but it isn't to make money."
"He has some idea," the girl proclaimed recklessly to the whole table, "of living as his ancestors lived; as if one could. He believes that people should go back to plain manners and to strict morals. His mission is to keep this mad world sane."
A ripple of laughter greeted her scorn. Her own laughter met it. The slim young man at the other end of the table swung his eye-glasses from their black ribbon negligently, but his eyes missed nothing.
"It is my only grievance against you, Mrs. Nancy," Eve told the little shining lady. "I love you for everything else, but not for this."
"I am sorry, my dear. But Richard and I think alike. So we are going to settle at Crossroads—and live happy ever after."
Anne Warfield, outwardly calm, felt the blood racing in her veins. The old house at Crossroads was just across the way from her little school. She had walked in the garden every day, and now and then she had taken the children there. They had watched the squirrels getting ready for the winter, and had fed the belated birds with crumbs from the little lunch baskets. And there had been the old sun-dial to mark the hour when the recess ended and to warn them that work must begin.
She had a rapturous vision of what it might be to have the old house open, and to see Nancy Brooks and her son Richard coming in and out.
Later, however, alone in her dull room, stripped of its holiday trappings, the vision faded. To Nancy and Richard she would be just the school-teacher across the way, as to-night she had been the girl who waited on the table!