“Give us a lift!” shrieked Ward, flinging himself upon the car as its speed decreased.  “Something is the matter with my engine—­ engina pectoris is what I call it!  Father, Mr. Tom Grant expects you to dine at his table to-night, he said to remind you.  And, Harriet, angel of angels, we will be about six or seven about the groaning board; is that all right?”

“I told Bottomley six or seven,” Harriet said, serenely.  “Ward, get in or get out,” she added, maternally, “don’t hang over the door in that blood-curdling way!”

She had put her arm about the boy to steady him; they began to discuss tennis scores with enthusiasm.  Richard drove the rest of the way home almost without speaking.

He planned to see Harriet again that evening, and left the club at eleven o’clock, after an incredibly dull game, with the definite hope that the youngsters would dance, or in some other way prolong the summer evening at least until midnight.  His heart sank when he reached Crownlands; the lower floor showed only the tempered lights that burned until the latest member of the family came in, and Bottomley reported that the young persons had gone upstairs at about half-past ten, sir.  It was now half-past eleven.

Richard debated sending Harriet a message to the effect that he would like to see her for a moment.  The flaw in this plan was that he could think of nothing about which there was the slightest necessity of seeing her.  He felt restless and anything but sleepy, and glanced irresolutely at the library door, and at the stairway.

Suddenly uproar broke out upstairs:  there were thumping feet, shrieks, wild laughter, and slamming doors.  With a suddenly lightened heart Richard ran up the wide, square flight to the landing.  His son, in pajamas that were more or less visible beneath his streaming robe of Oriental silk, was pirouetting about the upper hall with a siphon of soda water.  Subdued giggles and smothered gasps indicated that the young ladies were somewhere near, in hiding.  Young Hopper, under Ward’s direction, was investigating doors and alcoves.

“Amy Hawkes—­Amy Hawkes—­Amy Hawkes—­come into court!” Ward intoned.  “Drunk and disorderly!”

“Here, here, here!” Richard said.  “What’s all this?” Amy and Nina, with hysteric shrieks, immediately forsook cover, and dashed down to him, clinging to him wildly.

“Oh, Father!  Make them stop!  Oh, Mr. Carter, save us!” screamed the girls in delicious terror.  “Oh, they got poor Francesca—­she’s locked up in your room!  They climbed up our porch, after they swore to Harriet that they wouldn’t make another sound—­”

Harriet now appeared in the hallway, her hair falling in a braid over her shoulder, and the long lines of the black robe she wore giving her figure an unusual effect of height.  She did not see Richard immediately, for she had eyes only for Ward, as she caught his shoulder, and took away the siphon.