“Why couldn’t you and Ellery sleep in hammocks and then I could let Madge share my room with me and give the Benedicts the spare room?”
“Oh, that’s so,” said Ethel. “I’m afraid we can’t do it.”
“They’s a sofa in the woodshed,” said Minerva, who had been dusting the sitting room and always interested in household problems, had stopped at the open window outside of which we were sitting.
“So there is. Good for you, Minerva,” said I, in spite of a warning look from Ethel, who says that at times I am too colloquial with Minerva.
Ethel and I went around to the woodshed to look at it. It was across two rafters, but with help from James, who was busy in the vicinity, I got it down.
“So I’m to write and tell them all to come? Isn’t this going to be a good deal of a drain on your pocketbook, Philip?”
“We can’t do worse than go home broke and then I’ll begin again.”
“‘Easy come, easy go,’” quoted Ethel, with a half sigh.
“Don’t you want ’em to come? Will it be too hard on you?”
“No, no, we’ll make them understand it’s a picnic, but you will have to hustle in the fall.”
“Well, hustling never killed anybody, and we’ll have a summer to remember. It’s a lucky thing that James is so handy. He can help in the kitchen.”
And so the sofa was brought into the house and dusted, and the Wardens were implored to come up and told to take the same train that the Benedicts were coming on, and the haying season being practically over, we were able to engage Bert’s double team and his three-seated wagon, and Friday afternoon we all went down to meet them.
No, not all. We left Minerva behind. She and James had to prepare a dinner for eight.
There was no accident on the way down, and we arrived at the station several minutes before the arrival of the train.
At last we heard the whistle below the bridge and then it steamed in and we took up our station around the parlour car and prepared to greet our guests.
But the only one to get off was a well-setup young fellow in irreproachable apparel, and he did not belong to _us_.
“Why, of course, they never would have taken a parlour car. The Benedicts might, but the Wardens wouldn’t,” said Ethel, and we looked down the platform to see whether they had alighted. But they had not. Our guests had not come.