“Isn’t that rather a heavy load?” he suggested. “I’d be delighted to help you move the things, don’t you know.”
“It is quite kind of you, and what the men would call ‘‘game,’ I believe, under the circumstances,” she answered, “but really it will not be necessary. We have hired Mr. Tutt and the driver to do the heavier part of the work, and the rest of it will be really a pleasant diversion.”
“No doubt,” agreed Ralph, with an appreciative grin. “By the way, you don’t happen to know Maud and Dorothy Partridge, of Baltimore, do you? Stunning pretty girls, both of them, and no end of swells.”
“I know so very few people in Baltimore,” she murmured, and tripped on down to the barn.
Ralph went out on the porch and smoked. There was nothing else that he could do.
VIII
It was growing dusk when the elder Ellsworths returned, almost hidden by great masses of autumn boughs.
“You should have been with us, Ralph,” enthusiastically said his mother. “I never saw such gorgeous tints in all my life. We have brought nearly the entire woods with us.”
“It was a good idea,” said Ralph. “A stunning good idea. They may come in handy to sleep on.”
Mrs. Ellsworth turned cold.