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 anticipation.  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!

Old Matthew Kendrick assisted Mrs. Rufus Gray into his luxuriously fitted, electric-lighted town-car as if she had been a royal personage, wrapping about her soft, thick rugs until she was almost lost to view.

“Why, I couldn’t be cold in this shut-in place,” she protested.  “Not a breath could touch any one in here, I should say.”

“I should call it pretty snug,” Rufus Gray agreed with his wife, looking about him at the comfortable appointments of the car.  “But there’s just one thing a carriage like this wouldn’t be good for, and that’s taking a party of young folks on a sleigh ride, on a snapping winter’s night!” His bright brown eyes regarded those of Matthew Kendrick with some curiosity.  “I reckon you never took that sort of a ride, when you were a boy?” he queried.

“Yes, yes, I have—­many a time,” Mr. Kendrick insisted.  “And great times we had.  Boys and girls needed no electricity to keep them comfortable on the coldest of nights.  It’s my grandson Richard who feels this sort of thing a necessity.  Until he came home a carriage and pair had been all the equipage I needed.”