“Gee!  Hasn’t Uncle Cal got all those things himself—­except eyes?”

“Yes, but anybody who serves him needs them all, too.  I don’t believe Mr. Kendrick ever helped anybody before in his life.”

“Maybe he has.  He’s got loads of money, Louis says.”

“Oh, money!  Anybody can give away money.”

“They don’t all, I guess,” declared Ted, with boyish shrewdness.  “Say, Rob, why wouldn’t you ask him to the corn-pop frolic?”

Roberta looked round at him.  Drenched violets would have been dull and colourless beside the living tint of her eyes, the raindrops clinging to her lashes.  “Because he was too busy,” she replied, and looked away again.

“I didn’t think he seemed so very much in a hurry to get back to the library,” observed Ted.  “When I went down to the kitchen after the corn I looked in the door and he was sitting at the desk looking out of the window.  But then I look out of the window myself at school,” he admitted.

“Ted, shall we take this path or the other?” asked his sister, halting where three trails across the meadow diverged.

“This one will be the wettest,” said he promptly.  “But I like it best.”

“Then we’ll take it.”  And she plunged ahead.

“I say, Rob, but you’re a true sport!” acknowledged her young brother with admiration.  “Any girl I know would have wanted the dry path.”

“Dry?” Roberta showed him a laughing profile over her shoulder.  “Where all paths are soaking, why be fastidious?  The wetter we are the more credit for keeping jolly, as Mark Tapley would say.  Lead on, MacDuff!”

“You seem to be leading yourself,” shouted Ted, as she unexpectedly broke into a run.

“It’s only seeming, Ted,” she called back.  “Whenever a woman seems to be leading, you may take my word for it she’s only following the course pointed out by some man.  But—­when she seems to be following, look out for her!”

But of this oracular statement Ted could make nothing and wisely did not try.  He was quite content to splash along in Rob’s wake, thinking complacently how hot and buttery the popped corn would be an hour hence.

CHAPTER IV

PICTURES

Richard Kendrick had been guest at a good many dinners in the course of his experience, dinners of all sorts and of varying degrees of formality.  Club dinners, college-class dinners, “stag” dinners at imposing hotels and cafes, impromptu dinners hurriedly arranged by three or four fellows in for a good time, dinners at which women were present, more at which they were not—­these were everyday affairs with him.  But, strange to say, the one sort of dinner with which he was not familiar was that of the family type—­the quiet gathering in the home of the members of the household, plus one or two fortunate guests.  He had never sat at such a table under his own roof, and when he was entertained in the homes of his friends the occasion was invariably made one for summoning many other guests, and for elaborate feasting and diversion of all kinds.