"Oh, I don't know that it would be so wonderful," replied her brother, who was really very much interested just the same. "There are other places besides Twelfth Lake."
"Who said there weren't? But not for the people that we know around here. Where else do the best people from Albany and Utica go but there now, I'd like to know. It's going to become a regular center, Sondra says, with all the finest houses along the west shore. Just the same, the Cranstons, the Lamberts and the Harriets are going to move up there pretty soon, too," Bella added most definitely and defiantly. "That won't leave so many out at Greenwood Lake, nor the very best people, either, even if the Anthonys and Nicholsons do stay here."
"Who says the Cranstons are going up there?" asked Gilbert, now very much interested.
"Why, Sondra!"
"Who told her?"
"Bertine."
"Gee, they're getting gayer and gayer," commented her brother oddly and a little enviously. "Pretty soon Lycurgus'll be too small to hold 'em." He jerked at a bow tie he was attempting to center and grimaced oddly as his tight neck-band pinched him slightly.
For although Gilbert had recently entered into the collar and shirt industry with his father as general supervisor of manufacturing, and with every prospect of managing and controlling the entire business eventually, still he was jealous of young Grant Cranston, a youth of his own age, very appealing and attractive physically, who was really more daring with and more attractive to the girls of the younger set. Cranston seemed to be satisfied that it was possible to combine a certain amount of social pleasure with working for his father with which Gilbert did not agree. In fact, young Griffiths would have preferred, had it been possible, so to charge young Cranston with looseness, only thus far the latter had managed to keep himself well within the bounds of sobriety. And the Cranston Wickwire Company was plainly forging ahead as one of the leading industries of Lycurgus.
"Well," he added, after a moment, "they're spreading out faster than I would if I had their business. They're not the richest people in the world, either." Just the same he was thinking that, unlike himself and his parents, the Cranstons were really more daring if not socially more avid of life. He envied them.
"And what's more," added Bella interestedly, "the Finchleys are to have a dance floor over the boathouse. And Sondra says that Stuart was hoping that you would come up there and spend a lot of time this summer."