"Always; though I've never realized what was the matter with me till this year. Do you care about finishing this dance? Let's stop in this nice corner and talk about it a minute."

It was the same corner, deserted now, where he had twice tried to keep her elusive sister. Ruth was easier to manage, for she was genuinely interested.

"Just this year," he explained, "I've found out why I've never cared for Christmas. It's a beastly day to me. I spend it as I should Sunday--get through with it somehow. At last I go out to dinner somewhere in the evening, and so end the day."

"We all go to church on Christmas morning," Ruth told him. "That's a lovely way to spend part of the morning, I think. It gives you the real Christmas feeling. Don't you ever do it?"

He shook his head. "Never have; but I will to-morrow if you'll tell me where you go."

"To St. Luke's. The service is so beautiful, and we all have been there since we were old enough to go. I'm sure you'll like it. Wouldn't your grandfather like to go with you?"

Richard stared at her. "Why, I shouldn't have thought of it. Possibly he would. We never go anywhere together, to tell the truth."

"That's queer, when you're both so lonely. He must be lonely, too, mustn't he?"

"I never thought about it," said the young man. "I suppose he is. He never says so."

"You never say so either, do you?" suggested the girl navely.

The two looked at each other for a minute without speaking.

"Miss Ruth," said her companion at length, lowering his eyes to the floor and speaking thoughtfully, "I believe, to tell the truth, I'm a selfish beast. You've put a totally new idea into my head--more shame to me that it should be new. It strikes me that I'll try a new way of spending Christmas; I'll see to it that whoever is lonely grandfather isn't--if I can keep him from it."

"You can!" cried Ruth, beaming at him. "He thinks the world of you; anybody can see that. And you won't be lonely yourself!"

"Won't I? I'm not so sure of that--after to-night. But I admit it's worth trying. May I report to you how it works?" he asked, smiling.

Ruth agreed delightedly, and, when they separated, watched with interest to see that the new idea had already begun to work, as indicated by the way the younger Kendrick approached the elder, who was making his farewells.

"Going now, grandfather?" said he, with his hand on old Matthew Kendrick's arm. "We'll go together. I'll call James."

"You going too, d.i.c.k?" inquired his grandfather, evidently surprised.

"That's good."

As he took leave of Roberta, Richard found opportunity to exchange with her ever so brief a conversation. "This has been quite a wonderful experience to me, Miss Gray," said he. "I shall not forget it."

Her eyes searched his for an instant, but found there only sincerity.

"You have done your part better than could have been expected," she admitted.

"What grudging commendation! What should you have expected? That I should sulk in a corner because I couldn't have things all my own way?"

She coloured richly, and he rejoiced at having put her in confusion for an instant. "Of course not. But every one wouldn't have eyes to see the beauties of a family party where all the fun wasn't for the young people."

"There was only one dance I enjoyed better than the one with Mrs. Rufus Gray." He lowered his tone so that she could hear. "Since you have commended me for doing as your brother bade me--be all things to all partners--will you give me my reward by letting me tell you that I shall never hear 'Roses Red' again without thinking of the most perfect dance I ever had?"

"That sounds like an appropriate farewell from the cotillion leader,"

said Roberta. Then instantly she knew that in her haste to cover a very girlish sense of pleasure in the thing he had said she herself had said an unkind one. She knew it as a slow red came into her guest's handsome face and his eyes darkened. Before he could speak--though, indeed, he did not seem in haste to speak--she added, putting out her hand impulsively:

"Forgive me; I didn't mean it. You have been lovely to every one to-night, and I have appreciated it. I am wrong; I think you are much more--and have in you far more--than--as if you were only--the thing I said."

He made no immediate reply, though he took the hand she gave him. He continued to look at her for so long that her own eyes fell. When he did speak it was in a low, odd tone which she could not quite understand.

"Miss Gray," said he, "if you want to cut a man to the quick, insist on thinking him that which he has never had any love for being, and which he has grown to detest the thought of. But perhaps it's a salutary sort of surgery, for--by the powers! if I can't make you think differently of me it won't be for lack of will. So--thank you for being hard on me, thank you for everything. Good-night!"

As she looked at him march away with his head up, her hand was aching with the force of the almost brutally hard grip he had given it with that last speech. Her final glimpse of him showed him with a tinge of the angry red still lingering on his cheek, and a peculiar set to his finely cut mouth which she had never noticed there before. But, in spite of this, anything more courtly than his leave-taking of her mother and her Aunt Ruth she had never seen from one of the young men of the day.

CHAPTER IX

MR. KENDRICK ENTERTAINS

On their way downstairs, Matthew Kendrick and his grandson, escorted by Louis Gray, encountered a small company of people apparently just arrived from a train. Louis stopped for a moment to greet them, turned them over to his brother Stephen, whom he signalled from a stair-landing above, and went on down to the entrance-hall with the Kendricks.

"Too bad they're late for the party," he observed. "They had written they couldn't come, I believe. Mother will have to do a bit of figuring to dispose of them. But the more the merrier under this roof, every time."

"It's rather late to be putting people up for the night," Richard observed. "Your mother will be sending some of them to a hotel, I imagine. Couldn't we"--he glanced at his grandfather--"have the pleasure of taking them in our car? or of sending it back for them, if there are too many?"

"Thank you, but I've no doubt mother can arrange--" Louis Gray began, when old Matthew Kendrick interrupted him:

"We can do better than that, d.i.c.k," said he. He turned to Louis. "We will wait," said he, "while you present my compliments to your mother and say that it will give me great satisfaction if she will allow me to entertain an overflow party of her guests."

Hardly able to believe his ears, Richard stared at his grandfather. What had come over him, who had lived in such seclusion for so many years, that he should be offering hospitality at midnight to total strangers?

He smiled to himself. But the next moment a thought struck him.

"Grandfather," he said hurriedly, "why not specially invite that delightful couple--the one they call 'Uncle Rufus' and his wife?"

"An excellent idea," Mr. Kendrick agreed, "though they might not be willing to make the change at so late an hour."

"People who were dancing with spirit ten minutes ago will be ready to travel right now," prophesied Richard. He took flying leaps up the stairs in pursuit of Louis. Catching him on the next floor, he made his request known. Louis received it without sign of surprise, but inwardly, as he hurried away, he was speculating upon what agencies could be at work with the young man, that he should be so eager to do this deed of extraordinary friendliness.

Mrs. Gray hesitated over Matthew Kendrick's invitation, although her hospitable home was already crowded to the roof-tree. But, taking Judge Calvin Gray into her counsels, she was so strongly advised by him to accept the offer that she somewhat reluctantly consented to do so.

"It's great, Eleanor, simply great!" he urged. "It will do my friend Matthew mere good than anything that has happened to him in a twelvemonth. As for young Richard--from what I've seen to-night you've nothing to fear from his part in the affair. Let them have Rufus and Ruth--they'll enjoy it hugely. And give them as many more as will relieve the congestion. Matthew could take care of a regiment in that stone barracks of his."

"Sending Rufus and Ruth would give me quite s.p.a.ce enough," she declared.

"Rufus has the largest room in the house, and I could put this last party there. It is really very kind of Mr. Kendrick, and I shall be glad to solve my problem in that way, since you think it best."

Mr. and Mrs. Rufus Gray, having the question put to them, acceded to it with readiness. Both had been warmly drawn toward Richard, and though his grandfather had seemed to them a figure of somewhat unnecessarily dignified reserve, the mere fact of his extending the invitation at all was to them sufficient proof of his cordiality.

"It's nothing at all to pack up," Mrs. Rufus a.s.serted. "I'll just take what I need for the night, and we'll be coming over for the tree in the morning, so I can get my other things then. I shall call it a real treat to be inside the home of such a wealthy man. How lonely he must be, living in such a great house, with only his grandson!"

So Aunt Ruth descended the stairs, wearing her little gray silk bonnet and a heavy cape of gray cloth, her hand on her husband's arm, her bright eyes shining with antic.i.p.ation. Aunt Ruth dearly loved a bit of excitement and seldom found much in her quiet life upon the farm. As Matthew Kendrick looked up and saw her coming slowly down, her husband carefully adjusting himself to the dip and swing of her step as she put always the same foot foremost, he found himself distinctly glad of his grandson's suggestion, since it gave him so charming a guest to entertain as Mrs. Rufus Gray.

In the interval Richard had retired to a telephone, and had made the wires between his present position and the stone pile warm with his orders. In consequence a certain gray-haired housekeeper, lately returned from some family festivities of her own and about to retire, found herself galvanized into activity by the sound of a well-known and slightly imperious voice issuing upsetting instructions to have the best suite of rooms in the house made ready within half an hour for occupancy, and the house itself lighted for the reception of the guests.

Other commands to butler and Mr. Richard's own manservant followed in quick succession, and when the young man turned away from the telephone he was again smiling to himself at thought of the consternation he was causing in a household accustomed to be run upon such lines of conservatism and well defined routine that any deviation therefrom was likely to prove most unacceptable. He himself was at home there such a small portion of his time, and during the periods he spent there was so careful never to bring within its walls any festival-making of his own, he knew just how astonishing to the middle-aged housekeeper, the solemn-faced old butler, and the rest of them, would be these midnight orders. He was enjoying the giving of such orders all the more for that!