Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Hotels -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Love stories; Siblings -- Fiction
And presently she was ashamed of herself for having been so forward, and
so she pursued the feelings of shame to their logical conclusion and hid
her face.
And now, for the first time, she realized how hard she had worked ever
since The Camp was changed into an inn to make it a go, and how much
she needed rest and comforting and a masculine executive to lean on.
"Who said," murmured the ecstatic Langham, "that nothing good ever came
of liking good things to eat?"
"Sam," said Mary, "I'm so happy I don't care if lunch is burned to a
cinder."
It wasn't. Out of odds and ends of raw materials, and great slugs and
gallons of culinary genius, Chef produced a lunch that transcended even
Mary's and Langham's belief in him.
But it was Arthur who insisted that champagne be opened; and perhaps the
champagne made the lunch seem even more delicious than it really was.
Maud and Eve had already discounted Arthur's engagement and Lee's. They
had not, it is true, learned of the latter without feeling that if they
didn't hurry they would miss their train; but they had disguised and
fought off that feeling until now they were their gay and natural
selves. It remained for Mr. Langham to shock them suddenly into a new
set of emotions.
"I should be obliged," said he, rising to his feet, with a glass of
champagne in his hand, "if everybody would drink the health of the
happiest man present." Arthur and Renier looked very self-conscious.
But Mr. Langham concluded: "And that man is myself. I have the honor to
announce that, beyond peradventure, the loveliest and sweetest girl in
all the world----"
And at that Mary blushed so and looked so happy and beautiful that
everybody shouted with joy and surprise and laughter, and drank
champagne, and tossed compliments about like shuttlecocks. And Arthur
and Renier and Langham had a violent dispute as to which was the
happiest; and decided to settle the dispute with sabres at--twenty
paces.
Her first burst of surprise and excitement and pleasure having passed,
Eve Darling experienced a sudden sinking feeling. She felt as if all the
people she most loved to be with were going away on a delightful
excursion and that she was being left behind. It was at this moment,
while the uproar was still at its height, that she heard the shaken
voice of Mr. Bob Jonstone in her ear.
"How about us?" he demanded.
"How about us--what?" she answered.
Then she felt her hand seized and held in the secret asylum furnished by
the table-cloth, and there stole over her the solaceful feeling of
having been asked at the last moment to go upon the delightful
excursion.
"Eve?"
"Eve, darling--is it all right?"
"All right."
And then up shot Mr. Jonstone like a projectile from a howitzer, and he
cried aloud, his habitual calmness and lazy habit of speech flung to the
winds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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