"Kid, what did you do with those eats you brought along? I think it would be a good time to hand them out. I'm hungry. Suppose you take George out to the car to help you bring them in, and let's have a picnic!"
Then, turning to Shirley, he explained: "Elizabeth and I are great ones to have something along to eat. It makes one hungry to ride, you know."
The children needed no second word, but all hurried out to the car, and came back with a great bag of most delicious oranges and several boxes of fancy cakes and crackers; and they all sat down to enjoy them, laughing and chattering, not at all like landlord and tenants.
"Now what's to do next?" demanded the landlord as soon as the repast was finished. "I'm going to help. We're not here to hinder, and we must make up for the time we have stopped you. What were you and George doing, Miss Carol, when we arrived?"
"Unpacking dishes," giggled Carol, looking askance at the frowning Shirley, who was shaking her head at Carol behind Graham's back. Shirley had no mind to have the elegant landlord see the dismal state of the Hollister crockery. But the young man was not to be so easily put off, and to Carol's secret delight insisted upon helping despite Shirley's most earnest protests that it was not necessary to do anything more that evening. He and Elizabeth repaired to the dining-room end of the barn, and helped unpack dishes, pans, kettles, knives, and forks, and arrange them on the shelves that George had improvised out of a large old bookcase that used to be his father's. After all, there was something in good breeding, thought Shirley, for from the way in which Mr. Graham handled the old cracked dishes, and set them up so nicely, you never would have known but they were Haviland china. He never seemed to see them at all when they were cracked. One might have thought he had been a member of the family for years, he made things seem so nice and comfortable and sociable.
Merrily they worked, and accomplished wonders that night, for Shirley let them stay until nearly eleven o'clock "just for once"; and then they all piled into the car, Shirley and Carol and Elizabeth in the back seat, George and the happy Harley with Graham in the front. If there had been seven more of them, they would have all happily squeezed in. The young Hollisters were having the time of their lives, and as for the Grahams it wasn't quite certain but that they were also. Certainly society had never seen on Sidney Graham's face that happy, enthusiastic look of intense satisfaction that the moon looked down upon that night. And, after all, they got home almost as soon as if they had gone on the ten-o'clock trolley.