Strawberry Acres Part 4

"And Uncle Maxwell didn't think enough of it to take it to town with him--just locked it up and left it." This was Max's theory. "Uncle Maxwell knew nothing about books and cared less; he was all for business."

"Luckily for you. This must be worth a good deal, if you care to sell it," said Jarvis, who, close by one of the odd windows, was studying the fine text of a set of English dramatists.

Sally walked over and gently took the books out of his hand. "Jarvis Burnside," said she, decidedly, "the value of this collection is nothing beside the value of your eyes. Put on your goggles, and don't look at another line of type!"

CHAPTER III

THE APARTMENT OVERFLOWS

The telephone bell in the Lanes' apartment rang sharply. It had rung once before, but Sally, half-asleep on the couch in the middle of a warm April morning, had not roused enough to notice. She moved reluctantly toward it. Max's voice speaking urgently brought her back to her senses with a jump.

"Sally, where on earth are you? I've just had a wire from the Chases that they're coming through, and will stop off to see us. We'll have to put them up somehow. Of course they don't know how we're fixed, but they'll find out."

"Oh, Max!" Sally's tones were dismayed. "Why, we _can't_!"

"We'll have to. What would you have me do--wire them not to stop?

Besides, I couldn't get them. They've left the place they wired from--reach here to-night at nine. You'll have to have some kind of supper for them."

"But, Max--where--"

"Oh, figure it out somehow--you can, you know. I haven't a minute more to talk--inspector's here--everybody busy--" and the click of the receiver in Sally's ear ended the interview.

The Chases! They were young married people, who had been neighbours and schoolmates of the Lanes. Dorothy Eustis, as an older girl, had been much admired by Sally and Josephine until she married Neil Chase; that event had made a great difference in their warmth of feeling. Sally did not like Neil, never had liked him, and never would like him. A certain pomposity of manner, which had been a characteristic of his, ever since the days when he wore dresses and lorded it over the other infants in the park, had made him unpopular. He had, however, become a successful young attorney in his father's law firm, and had within the last year gone to a larger city several hundred miles away to start practice for himself.

The thought of entertaining Neil and Dorothy Chase in the little apartment was almost too much for Sally Lane. The Chases had gone away just before the Lanes had sold the old house, and knew nothing of the new quarters--evidently realized nothing of their small dimensions. It had been characteristic of them to telegraph that they were coming, without waiting for a reply. That was precisely like Neil.

Something must be done, and at once. It was now eleven o'clock. There was none too much time in which to make ready. Sally began reluctantly to plan. The Chases must have her room, of course; it was the best in the flat, measuring eight feet by ten. Bob would have to go in with Uncle Timothy and let Sally have his usual quarters, the couch in the living-room. Sally's room must be hastily put in guest-room order--no easy task, in a s.p.a.ce where every inch counts because it must be made the most of. She was thankful, for once, that she need expect none of her family home to luncheon.

At noon, however, quite unexpectedly Bob ran in upon her, an errand from the office where he worked having brought him within a stone's throw of home. He liked to surprise Sally with two-minute visits, when he could do so by making time over the rest of his course.

"h.e.l.lo, what's up?" was his greeting, as he surveyed his sister standing in the centre of an extraordinary confusion of furnishings which seemed to him to extend over the entire flat.

Sally flung down her dust-cloth and sank into a chair, showing a flushed face and disturbed eyes.

"Max telephoned that the Chases are coming to-night--Neil and Dorothy, on their way somewhere. Isn't it horrible? What do you suppose they'll think of things here?"

"Well, well--old Neil's coming to show us his chest expansion, is he? And my Lady Dolly! Hum--well--I guess it will do'em good to see how some people live. Mrs. Chase will bring four trunks and a lot of hand stuff, will she? If she does, we'll move out and leave them the place."

"Mercy! They're only going to stay overnight--at least, I _think_ that's all. The only thing that keeps me up is the thought that at this time to-morrow they'll be gone! A hospitable hostess I am, Bob. But--Oh, Bobby, my head aches so this morning I just can't rise to the occasion!"

"Your head aches? What's the reason for that?" Bob asked, in some dismay.

"You're not a headache sort of girl."

"No, and that's why it seems to take the pluck out of me so. It ached yesterday, too. And I feel just heavy and stupid."

As she spoke, she turned and laid her head down on her arms on the back of her chair. Bob darted across from the doorway and laid an awkwardly sympathetic young hand on the flaxen ma.s.ses of his sister's hair.

"It's a shame!" he said, warmly. "I wish I could stay and help you. But I tell you what I'll do. I'll be up the minute I get out of the office.

Leave the heavy things for me to do. And don't try to house-clean the whole flat just because of Mrs. Dorothy Chase. She isn't worth it."

He was as good as his word. Five o'clock in the afternoon saw him at home again, helping Sally in every way he could think of. Bob was good help, and she had seldom needed him more than to-day. She went about with flushed cheeks, moving languidly, yet keeping steadily at work with the determination of the young hostess who sees nothing else to do.

She had spent the afternoon in the kitchen; she spent the evening in all those little final tasks which seem so small and yet in the aggregate do weigh heavily, upon the eve of entertaining.

Work at the bank kept Max until he had barely time to go to the station for his guests. Alec, coming home to dinner, and finding himself put off with what he hungrily characterized as a mere "bite," on account of the necessities of the occasion, went off again somewhere, declaring that he did not see the occasion for starving the family just on account of entertaining two already overfed visitors. Uncle Timothy, as was to be expected, as soon as he heard of the emergency, joined Bob in coming to Sally's aid, and at half past seven in the evening might have been discovered by the curious, sitting in the small kitchen, a blue-checked ap.r.o.n tied about his neck, busily polishing silver.

"It seemed to me pretty bright before, Sally," was his only comment as he worked. "But I suppose no man could really comprehend the difference between the degree of brightness suitable for one's family and that demanded by company."

"If you had seen Dorothy Chase's wedding silver--" responded Sally, and stopped there, as if words could no further go.

"Yes, yes, I suppose so." Uncle Timothy was rubbing away at a set of thin old teaspoons which had belonged to Sally's grandmother. "Still, my dear, it seems as if things taste better out of these old spoons than out of those handsome new ones the boys gave you Christmas."

"Oh, I love the old things." Sally held a china sugar bowl with a gold band round it up to the light as she wiped it. She had taken all the best old china out of its hiding place under the couch, and was giving it a hot-water bath, drying each article herself, not daring to trust the frail pieces to Bob's hands. "But Dorothy hates old stuff, and wants everything modern."

"I remember," said Uncle Timothy, mildly. "I was always too antique for her to notice. I sha'n't be surprised if she stumbles over me to-night, not noticing that I'm here."

"If she does," called Bob, from the depths of a closet which he was sweeping out under Sally's direction, "she'll settle with me! She'll find I've grown a few inches since she used to call me Sally's 'everlasting little brother.'"

It was all done at last. Sally went to dress, wearily exhorting herself to remember that her room was not her room to-night, and that she must not forget and leave so much as a stray hair-pin on the freshly washed and ironed linen of the little toilet-table.

She stowed away, under the couch on which she was to sleep, the clean cambric house-dress she meant to put on the next morning, feeling that it would not be at all surprising if she were unable to rise from that couch to get breakfast, and wondering what Dorothy Chase could do about breakfast if thrown upon her own resources. It was so unusual for Sally's vigorous young frame to experience such exhaustion after even more severe effort than that of the past day that she could only wonder what it meant, and finally decided, after some speculation, that it was the effect of these first warm days of spring, combined with the stress of entertaining under difficulties.

"Well, here we are!" Max's voice could be heard in the hall outside, ushering in his guests. "Go single file down this pa.s.sage--you can't get through side by side!"

Sally went hurriedly forward and met Dorothy Chase's smartly tailored figure in the middle of the tiny pa.s.sage.

"Goodness gracious!" Bob and Alec and Mr. Timothy Rudd heard a familiar high-pitched voice exclaim. "You don't mean to tell us you live in this mouse-hole! Actually, my hat hits on both sides!"

Then came Neil Chase's barytone drawl--how well Bob remembered hating the sound of it with a profound hatred when it had been addressed contemptuously to him! "Really, Dorothy--you know--I told you that brim of yours was an inch and a half beyond the limit, and this proves it!"

But Sally's pretty head was held high. If she had a headache, its effect was visible only in her brilliant cheeks.

"You always ran to extremes, Dorothy, dear. Why didn't you take that absurd creation off in the vestibule? Neil, how are you? Have you your best Chesterfieldian manner with you? Because you'd better leave it outside; the apartment's not large enough for you and it, too!"

"The same impertinent child," declared Mrs. Chase, surveying her hostess in the light of the living-room. "And here's smart Alec," as that youth came forward, his smile of welcome undergoing a wry twist at this somewhat unusual greeting. "And Bob--heavens, child, how you've grown!

And this is--oh, yes--Mr. Rudd!"

Her careless hand, in its travelling glove, met Uncle Timothy's grasp, and left it as casually as her bright hazel eyes left the glance of his faded blue ones. Bob, watching, grinned at Uncle Timothy meaningly, and received in return the mild sparkle of amus.e.m.e.nt with which the "antique"

was accustomed to show himself invulnerable to neglect from young persons of Dorothy Chase's stamp.

Neil's greetings of the family were also highly characteristic. One who had never before seen him might have argued many things from the style of his opening address:

"This is Alec, eh? Well, Alec, I see you're still the flower of the family. Bob--how do you like sweeping out offices? Better than going to school? And here's Uncle Thomas--beg pardon--Uncle Joshua. Not got it right yet, Sally? Confound my memory--yes, yes--Uncle Timothy. How are you, my dear sir?"