“What do you mean?” she gasped.
“Ralph,” sternly demanded his father, “you don’t mean to tell us that you let the Van Kamps jockey us out of those rooms after all?”
“Indeed, no,” he airily responded. “Just come right on up and see.”
He led the way into the suite and struck a match. One solitary candle had been left upon the mantel shelf. Ralph thought that this had been overlooked, but his mother afterwards set him right about that. Mrs. Van Kamp had cleverly left it so that the Ellsworths could see how dreadfully bare the place was. One candle in three rooms is drearier than darkness anyhow.
Mrs. Ellsworth took in all the desolation, the dismal expanse of the now enormous apartments, the shabby walls, the hideous bright spots where pictures had hung, the splintered flooring, the great, gaunt windows—and she gave in. She had met with snub after snub, and cut after cut, in her social climb, she had had the cook quit in the middle of an important dinner, she had had every disconcerting thing possible happen to her, but this—this was the last bale of straw. She sat down on a suitcase, in the middle of the biggest room, and cried!
Ralph, having waited for this, now told about the food transaction, and she hastily pushed the last-coming tear back into her eye.
“Good!” she cried. “They will be up here soon. They will be compelled to compromise, and they must not find me with red eyes.”
She cast a hasty glance around the room, then, in a sudden panic, seized the candle and explored the other two. She went wildly out into the hall, back into the little room over the kitchen, downstairs, everywhere, and returned in consternation.
“There’s not a single mirror left in the house!” she moaned.
Ralph heartlessly grinned. He could appreciate that this was a characteristic woman trick, and wondered admiringly whether Evelyn or her mother had thought of it. However, this was a time for action.