“I’m not sure.”
“Gee—well, I am——” and young Arthur went over to thrash it out with Sandy.
Evans, left to himself, wondered. Did he want money? A great fortune? With Jane? The huge silent house with all its servants? Jane, herself, trailing up the stairs in all the dazzling draperies imposed upon her by fashionable modistes? Jane, miles away from him at the end of that massive table in the great dining-room?
Were these his dreams? For Jane?
He knew they were not. When he thought of her, he thought of a little house. Of a living-room where a fire burned bright whose windows looked upon a little garden—crocuses and hyacinths in the spring, roses in June, snow in winter, with all the birds coming up for Jane to feed them. A library with books to the ceiling, and himself reading to Jane. A kitchen, a shining place, with a crisp maid to save Jane from drudgery. Two crisp maids, perhaps, some day, if there were kiddies.
He asked no more than that. Why, it was all the world for a man....
CHAPTER XVI
THE COSTUME BALL
So Christmas Eve came, and the costume ball at the Townes’. There were, as Baldy had told Jane, just six of them at dinner. Cousin Annabel was still in bed, and it was Adelaide Laramore who made the sixth. Edith had told Mrs. Follette frankly that she wished Adelaide had not been asked.