“Would you help me move the table and dresser with the glass door into the living room? Larsen bangs furniture so when he does it, and the deal table from the summer kitchen can come here for the help.”
Jumping up—“There’s some one knocking now! Dear me, it’s the Bisbee boy with a telegram. Open it, do, and give him a quarter from the shelf by the clock, for riding up with it,” and Miss Keith sank back in the rocking chair and closed her eyes like some one about to have a tooth drawn, who dreaded the sight of the instruments.
Silent Stead opened the blue envelope with the studied deliberation with which he performed every act of life, except riding Manfred, at which time the two abandoned themselves to mutual impulse. Shaking out the sheet, he read slowly:—
“Please meet us with closed carriage at Stonebridge, two-thirty. Baggage to Gilead.
“To-day at two-thirty!” ejaculated Miss Keith, who, mind you, had been more than ready for ten days; “then there’s no time to fix up the living room, or do more than sweep and tidy up and get dinner,—they will have to put up with the kitchen for once. Why do they get out at Stonebridge? It is three miles farther than Gilead Station, and a closed carriage means one of Bisbee’s hacks, for the rockaway must go too for the help. Has that boy of his gone?” Stead hurried to the road, but the boy was disappearing down the third hill at a pace that forbade recall.
“I will go down and order the carriage for you,” Stead volunteered, “and tell them to put in hot stones and plenty of rugs; it’s a cold drive from Stonebridge, but they come that way doubtless because the express stops there and not at Gilead. They could not bring a man in Mr. Lawton’s condition so long a journey in a way train.”
“If you would, I should be so relieved, and one thing more. I know you make a point of keeping away from folks, especially women, and these are strangers to you; but they’ll be so worried likely as not they’ll hardly notice you. Now would you be so good as to meet them and see they find the carriage and get properly started, and tell Bisbee to keep to the lower road in spite of the trolley until they reach the third hill? It’s far less jolty and better shovelled out.