CHAPTER IX

MAX COMPROMISES


"I'll tell you what I'll do," said Maxwell Lane. "I'll compromise. If
Sally and the rest of you will let up on your nonsensical plan of staying
in this barracks all winter, I'll agree to stick it out till--November."

He encountered Sally's gaze. They were all upon the great, high-columned
porch which gave to the front of the house its impressive air of being an
old family mansion. It was a fortnight after the tent party--a fine
August evening. Josephine and Jarvis Burnside had just driven out, and
Donald Ferry, seeing them come, had strolled over. So not only Sally, but
six other people, were hanging on Max's decision.

He had meant to say "till October." But as he met his sister's eyes it
occurred to him that a compromise, which offered one month instead of
six, might perhaps be considered a trifle too one-sided to be accepted as
a compromise at all. So he finished the sentence, after a perceptible
pause, with "till November." That, surely, was being generous, he
considered. Just why all decisions should be made by him, as supreme
arbiter, can hardly be explained, except that he had assumed that
position three years before, when the other young Lanes had been
negligible factors in all matters of business, and he, by the divine
right of his twenty-one years, had, upon the death of his father, taken
the management of the family affairs into his own hands.

Sally drew a long breath of relief. Anyhow, she now had more than two
months' reprieve. By the end of that period something might happen to