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The next morning I set my labourers to work putting guest-rooms into shape for the coming of the Hazzards and the four friends who were to be with them for the week as my guests. They were to arrive on the next day but one, which gave me ample time to consult a furniture dealer.
"My compliments to General Bordeaux, Lieutenant Paine, and tell him that the left of the newly won trenches must be held at all hazzards!" Hal sprang upon a nearby motorcycle and soon was speeding toward the front. "Lieutenant Crawford! The same instructions to General Ducal on the right!" A moment later Chester was speeding forward.
To my surprise the Hazzards and the Smiths were as much in the dark as I concerning development in the great kidnapping case. The wily Mr. Pless suddenly ceased delivering his confidences to outsiders. Evidently he had been cautioned by those in charge of his affairs. He became as uncommunicative as the Sphinx.
At the end of a week, he took it upon himself to drop a line to the Hazzards, urging them to run out for a visit in the hope that company might take me out of myself. All attempts to renew my work on the ill-fated novel met with utter failure. The power of mental concentration was gone. I spent most of my time in the garden. The Hazzards came and with them the joyously beautiful Betty Billy.
I could not help feeling the derision in which he held not only me but the Hazzards and the Smiths as well. He looked upon all of us as coming from an inferior race, to be tolerated only as passers-by and by no means worthy of his august consideration. We were not of his world and never could be.
He took away eleven hundred and sixty-five dollars of my money, besides, genially acquired at roulette, and I dread to think of what he and the baron took out of my four friends at auction bridge. I will say this for him: he was the smartest aristocrat I've ever known. Need I add that the Hazzards and the Smiths travelled second-class?
Secretly I cherished the idea of selling the place if I could find a lunatic in the market. An unexpected diversion came one day when, without warning and figuratively out of a clear sky, the Hazzards and the Billy Smiths swooped down upon me. They had come up the river in the power boat for a final September run, and planned to stop over night with me!
I looked, despaired and then dictated a letter to the Hazzards, urging them to come at once with all their sweltering friends! I needed some one to make me forget. At eleven o'clock, Poopendyke brought me a note from the chatelaine of the east wing. It had been dropped into the courtyard from one of the upper windows. The reading of it transformed me into a stern, relentless demon.
"Mother, do you realize that it is eight years since I was in that play with the Hazzards and Gray Babcock and the Grinells? Isn't that AWFUL?" She fell into sombre thought. Julia went through the day in a sort of deep study. This was the enchanted castle that had stood to her for so long as the unattainable height of dreams; these were the envied inhabitants of that castle.
The next day, instead of continuing our delightful trip down the river, we three were scurrying to Saalsburg, urged by a sudden and stupendous whim on my part, and filled with a new interest in life. I had made up my mind to buy the castle! The Hazzards sat up with me nearly the whole of the night, trying to talk me out of the mad design, but all to no purpose.
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