“It will take all you’ve got!” she called back.

“I wonder if hearts are any help in solving problems?” Jarvis thought, half-smiling to himself when she had gone.  “Hers certainly isn’t concerned with anybody at present.  But I wonder if I’m a wise fellow to be plotting to help her spend the winter next door to the finest chap I know.  I wonder!  But I’m certainly committed to the endeavour.”

Whatever was the result of his use of the brains with which he had been endowed, he lost no time in making his first effort.  That evening, as the company finished their dinner and strolled back into the hall, Jarvis challenged Max to a walk up the cartpath toward the timber tract.

“Too wet,” objected Max.  “The rain stopped only an hour ago; everything’s soaking.”

“I know it, but we’ve both been shut up all day in-doors, and need the exercise.  Besides, while we were at dinner I saw Ferry making for the woods with his axe over his shoulder.  We’ll find him there and have a jolly visit.  He’s great company when he’s at work—­which is saying a good deal, for better company at any time I don’t know of.”

Max reluctantly submitted, turned up his trousers widely, shouldered an umbrella, and the two set out.  Sally looked after them, her hopes following them, for she had received a meaning look from Jarvis which told her that his schemes were already on foot.  She had seen him in conference with his mother that afternoon, and was sure the two were agreed upon whatever suggestion of purchase Jarvis might be about to make.  Yet Sally held her breath.  What if—­what if—­Max should, after all, jump at the offer?

CHAPTER IX

MAX COMPROMISES

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Maxwell Lane.  “I’ll compromise.  If Sally and the rest of you will let up on your nonsensical plan of staying in this barracks all winter, I’ll agree to stick it out till—­November.”

He encountered Sally’s gaze.  They were all upon the great, high-columned porch which gave to the front of the house its impressive air of being an old family mansion.  It was a fortnight after the tent party—­a fine August evening.  Josephine and Jarvis Burnside had just driven out, and Donald Ferry, seeing them come, had strolled over.  So not only Sally, but six other people, were hanging on Max’s decision.

He had meant to say “till October.”  But as he met his sister’s eyes it occurred to him that a compromise, which offered one month instead of six, might perhaps be considered a trifle too one-sided to be accepted as a compromise at all.  So he finished the sentence, after a perceptible pause, with “till November.”  That, surely, was being generous, he considered.  Just why all decisions should be made by him, as supreme arbiter, can hardly be explained, except that he had assumed that position three years before, when the other young Lanes had been negligible factors in all matters of business, and he, by the divine right of his twenty-one years, had, upon the death of his father, taken the management of the family affairs into his own hands.