he hall and waited
until Evelyn came down with a huge armload of window curtains.

"Honors are still even," he remarked. "I have just bought all the
edibles about the place, whether in the cellar, the house or any of
the surrounding structures, in the ground, above the ground, dead or
alive, and a bargain's a bargain as between man and man."

"Clever of you, I'm sure," commented Miss Van Kamp, reflectively.
Suddenly her lips parted with a smile that revealed a double row of
most beautiful teeth. He meditatively watched the curve of her lips.

"Isn't that rather a heavy load?" he suggested. "I'd be delighted to
help you move the things, don't you know."

"It is quite kind of you, and what the men would call 'game,' I
believe, under the circumstances," she answered, "but really it will
not be necessary. We have hired Mr. Tutt and the driver to do the
heavier part of the work, and the rest of it will be really a pleasant
diversion."

"No doubt," agreed Ralph, with an appreciative grin. "By the way, you
don't happen to know Maud and Dorothy Partridge, of Baltimore, do you?
Stunning pretty girls, both of them, and no end of swells."

"I know so very few people in Baltimore," she murmured, and tripped on
down to the barn.

Ralph went out on the porch and smoked. There was nothing else that he
could do.

VIII

It was growing dusk when the elder Ellsworths returned, almost hidden
by great masses of autumn boughs.

"You should have been with us, Ralph," enthusiastically said his
mother. "I never saw such gorgeous tints in all my life. We have
brought nearly the entire woods with us."

"It was a good idea," said Ralph. "A stunning good idea. They may come
in handy to sleep on."

Mrs. Ellsworth turned cold.

"What do you mean?" she gasped.

"Ralph," sternly demanded his father, "you don't mean to tell us that
you let the Van Kamps jockey us out of those rooms after all?"

"Indeed, no," he airily responded. "Just come right on up and see."

He led the way into the suite and struck a match. One solitary candle
had been left upon the mantel shelf. Ralph thought that this had been
overlooked, but his mother afterwards set him right about that. Mrs.
Van Kamp had cleverly left it so that the Ellsworths could see how
dreadfully bare the place was. One candle in three rooms is drearier
than darkness anyhow.

Mrs. Ellsworth took in all the desolation, the dismal expanse of the
now enormous apartments, the shabb