Alec and Bob eagerly echoed Max’s plea.

“Bachelors’ hall?  Well, I don’t know that I mind, since my stuff hasn’t gone back yet.  Mother and Jo have company asked for next week, and will expect me to help entertain, but I can be out at Strawberry Acres more or less.  Come up to the house in the car with me, while I explain; then we’ll drive out.  Al and Bob can ride on the running boards, if they like.”

They jumped on, feeling that to stay together was to mind things less.  It was odd how low of spirit they all were already.  Surely, one would think that four strapping fellows might contemplate getting on for a space without one slim young person who was accustomed not only to humour them, but to make three of them toe certain well-defined marks in the matter of clean linen, fresh cravats, and carefully parted hair.  Yet not one of them was really willing to go home till the others should be coming along too.

In front of the fireplace, later, when Joanna had given them so good a dinner that it would seem as if their content could hardly be preyed upon by any contemplation of the future, Bob suddenly voiced the general sentiment.  He was lying on his side upon the hearth-rug, his round face fiery from his proximity to the blaze.

“Why does it feel so different when you know people are miles away and getting farther every minute than when you know they’ve just gone to town for a party?” he queried, thoughtfully.  “They’re away just the same—­they aren’t here, I mean.  Why isn’t being away the same thing as being away?”

At any other time this somewhat involved statement of conditions would have provoked jeers from the company.  But no jeers were forthcoming.  Max grunted, lying flat on his back on the couch—­whose pillows Joanna had carefully plumped up—­his heels on the arm at the end.  Alec, standing at the window with his hands in his pockets, staring out into the frosty night, turned about and remarked that on a train averaging sixty to seventy miles an hour Sally must already be out of the state.

“Wonder if she’s asleep,” speculated Bob.  “She used to like sleeping on sleepers, when father and mother used to take us around so much.  Say, she had a whole section to herself—­at least till we left, and nobody was coming aboard then.  Hope she has the luck to keep it.  Funny!  The car was crowded, and so was the next one.  I looked in.”

“Plenty of people may get on before midnight.” reflected Alec.

Jarvis picked up a magazine.  “Suppose I read aloud this article on railroading,” he proposed.  The company consented and he began.  He had not read two pages before he ran, so to speak, into a series of frightful railway wrecks.  But, wishing he had chosen something else, he kept on till suddenly Bob interrupted with a fierce:  “Cut it!  I’ve got her knocked into five thousand pieces now—­I’ll dream of those confounded smash-ups and Sally in the midst of ’em, if you don’t drop that magazine.”