Now this speech was highly characteristic and therefore not unexpected.  Nevertheless, it made Jarvis Burnside feel exceedingly like kicking his friend violently from his seat into the road.  For a moment, all he could command himself to do was to tighten his grip on his horses and send them at a considerably accelerated pace along the smooth turnpike.  When he spoke, however, it was with no change from the quiet good humour of his former tone.

“You don’t mean just that, with an old friend like me.  Mother and Jo are with me in this attempt at a pleasant surprise.  They will be tremendously hurt if you get up on your dignity and take it this way.  We knew you had no time to be arranging camps, here or anywhere else, yet we saw you working yourself to death, and Sally needing to get out of the heat—­”

“I understand.  Jo talked this thing at me the last time we were out here.  It’s a trick to get round my refusal to live here.  You think you can get in an entering wedge.  It’s no use won’t live out here.  It’s nonsense, and—­”

Sally’s voice interrupted from behind:  “Max, isn’t this glorious?  Don’t you feel like a new person?  We must be almost at the farm.  Just think, I haven’t seen the farm since April, before a leaf was out!”

But Josephine, who understood the situation, and was anxious to prevent any interference with the conversation now going on upon the front seat, promptly drew Sally back to their own interview.

“Max, listen to me.”  Jarvis spoke in a still lower voice.  “Do one thing for the sake of my pride, if not for yours.  I may have blundered, but you know I didn’t mean to.  I thought I could count on your understanding my motives.  But anyhow, just for to-night, give way to my schemes, and don’t let the others see that you’re offended with us.  If after a night here you still honestly think I’m a fool and a meddler, I won’t say another word—­”

“A night here!  Do you expect to keep us here all night?”

“Why not?”

“You must think I’m—­”

“I think you’re a reasonable being and a kind-hearted brother.  If Sally likes the plan and wants to stay, let her.  If she doesn’t, I’ll cheerfully take you both home.  Mother’s here to welcome us and make the thing proper, and we’ve all planned to stay.  Think of the oven your flat is to-night.  Come, be good, and you’ll be cool!”

“Do you realize you’re treating me like a small boy?”

“I feel rather like one myself—­one who has stolen a cake out of the pantry and is in danger of a thrashing,” was Jarvis’s whimsical admission.  “See here.  I’ll give you leave to take it out of me all you like.  I’ll agree to meet you at midnight in the timber tract, and take whatever you see fit to administer—­provided you’ll keep in before the rest.  What do you say?” In making this preposterous proposition he was apparently perfectly serious.

It was as Mrs. Burnside had said.  If anybody could manage Max’s proud stubbornness, it was Jarvis, with his cool command of himself and his inborn habit of courtesy to everybody.  Yet even Jarvis had his hands full to-night.  Max’s physical condition of fatigue and overwrought nerves made him more than ordinarily captious and difficult to handle.