“This idea of living out here in winter—­” Max went off on a new tack—­“it’s seemed to me absolute foolishness.  But if Neil Chase is so, confoundedly anxious to move in before we can move out—­”

“Neil Chase!”

“Yes.  He practically made me an offer for the place to-night.”

“Well, well!” Jarvis’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction in the darkness.  So old Neil was helping the thing along, was he?  Nothing could have been better.  “Going to consider it?”

“Hardly!  See here, could we keep warm in that barracks this winter?”

“You don’t have to live all over it.  With those fireplaces and waste wood enough in your lot up there to run a blast-furnace, I don’t see why you should have any fear of freezing.”

“Our little stock of furniture wouldn’t go anywhere in furnishing.”

“It would furnish a certain amount of space.  Keep the rest shut up till you could furnish it.”

“I shouldn’t think of the thing for a minute,” said Max, in the tone of one who explains the inconsistency of so sudden a change of attitude, “if I hadn’t this day been notified that the price of our flat is to go up ten dollars a month on the first of November.  It’s an outrage!”

“It’s an extraordinary piece of luck,” said Jarvis to himself.  But aloud he admitted that it was a good deal of a jump, and a pretty high price for the flat.

At this moment some one looked out of the kitchen window, and then asked Mary Ann inside if she had seen anything lately of Mr. Max.

“I suppose we’ll have to go back to the crowd,” admitted Max, and they returned just in time to see the first guests taking their leave.

When all had gone, Jarvis hunted up Sally.  He found her in one of the dressing-rooms, extinguishing candles which had nearly burned to the bottoms of the lanterns, and were threatening their inflammable surroundings.

“Here, don’t touch those things, with your thin clothes on!” Jarvis cried.  “We fellows must go round and make all safe—­no taking any chances with the house full of dry corn-stalks.  But first—­have you had a good time to-night?”

“A glorious time.  All the evening I’ve felt as if I lived here—­it looked so furnished, somehow, with all the lights and decorations.”

“It made you want to live here more than ever, didn’t it?”

“It did, indeed.  And in ten days we shall be going back to town,”

“Perhaps you won’t.”

She stared at him.  “What in the world do you mean?”

“I don’t mean anything,” said he, laughing.  “I’m like a small boy bursting with the secret information that there’s to be ice-cream for dinner.  So I don’t mean anything—­but I’d like to shake hands on it, just the same.”

“Jarvis!” She let him seize both her hands and shake them up and down.  “You do mean something!”

“Come out in the hall and do the corn-stalk prance with me.”