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A tin of blackened rolls puffed out at him their pungent smoke. "Well, what " he was beginning with the natural irritation of the hungry man, who has been anticipating his supper all the way home, and sees it in ruin before his eyes, when Charlotte appeared in the doorway. "O Lanse!" she cried, and ran to him. "Well, what is it? Celia got a headache and left you in charge?
"I could do something," began Charlotte, eagerly. "I could I could do sewing " At that there was a general howl, which quite broke the solemnity of the occasion. "Charlotte sewing!" they cried. "Why not take in washing?" urged Lanse. "Or solicit orders for fancy cooking?" "Or tutor stupid little boys in languages? Come! Fiddle stick to your specialty."
At ten o'clock that evening, when Charlotte had seen her sister comfortably in bed for Celia still needed help in undressing had tucked in Just and warned Jeff that it was bedtime, the telephone-bell rang. Lanse and Captain Rayburn sat reading in the living-room, where the telephone stood upon a desk, and Lanse, who was near it, moved lazily to answer it.
Will you stay, or are you going to sit staring down at us with those big black eyes forever?" "I think I'll stay," said Charlotte, happily, slipping down from the car into her brother's outstretched arms. "O Lanse! O Lanse! It's good to see you. What a surprise!" Charlotte swung herself up into the runabout as Doctor Churchill paused for her at the gateway of "The Banks."
Jeff looked at his brother seriously. "Lanse," he said, "if you go into one of the locomotive shops won't you get a place for me?" But Celia interposed. "Whatever the rest of us do," she said, "Jeff and Just must keep on with school." Jeff rebelled with a grimace. "Not much!" he shouted. "I guess one six-footer is as good as another in a boiler-shop.
He glanced at Charlotte, and met what he had counted on her help. "No, I can manage," she said quietly. The doctor was soon ready, with arms, surgically clean, bared to the elbows. It was rather a bad ten minutes for Lanse that followed, although he bore it bravely, without a sound.
"And poached the egg too hard. Lanse says the coffee is better, but oh, no matter I'm just discouraged this morning, I shall learn something some time, perhaps, but " She turned away impulsively. Doctor Churchill followed her a step or two. "See here, Miss Charlotte," he said, "how many times have you been out of the house since your sister was hurt?"
"Good-night!" she responded, and went on up-stairs, turning to wave at Jeff from the landing, as he stood in the doorway, preparing to go out to the tents where he and Just, Doctor Forester, Frederic and Lanse were spending these dry June nights. Evelyn went on to the odd old bedroom under the gable, where she and Lucy were quartered together.
"Here they come!" murmured Charlotte, trying distractedly to hush the baby by means which were never known to have that effect upon a startled infant in a strange house. Her door swung open. Celia stood on the threshold, her eyes wide with alarm. Lanse, lightly costumed in pink-and-white pajamas, gazed over her shoulder. "Charlotte Birch!" cried Celia, and words failed her.
Just's chin sank lower and lower. Lanse eyed him a moment, struggling with a desire to seize the boy and punish him tremendously. But as his quick wrath cooled a trifle in his effort to control himself and act wisely, something about Just's brave acknowledgment, where silence would have covered the whole thing, appealed to him.
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