or
having insisted that she carry her contract through. Or--if that were too
harsh a way of putting it,--that she was coquetting with him. Having told
her down there in the South that he didn't care for her in a loverlike
way, he might now have an opportunity of proving that he did--over
obstacles!

It gave him a twinge, for a fact, but he managed to ask good-humoredly if
this meant that he was to be barred from the whole show, from
performances as well as from rehearsals and the Ravinia house.

"I won't care," she said with a laugh of desperation, "after I've once
got my teeth in. But until then... Oh, I know it sounds horrible but I
don't want even to--feel you; not even in the fringe of it.

"I'll tell you who I would like, though," she went on over a palpable
hesitation and with a flush of color rising to her cheeks. "I can't live
all alone up there of course. I could get along with just a maid, but it
would be easier and nicer if I could have some one for a--companion. And
the person I'd choose, if she'd do it, is Mary."

He said, not quite knowing whether to be pleased or not, that they could
ask her about it at all events. They were rather counting on her out at
Hickory Hill but he didn't know that that need matter. Only wasn't
Mary--family, herself, a reminder of home?

"Not a bit," said Paula, with a laugh. "Not but what she likes me well
enough," she went on, trying to account for her preference (these
Wollastons were always concerned about the whys of things) "but she
stands off a little and looks on; without holding her breath, either. And
then, well, she'd be a sort of reminder of you, after all."

Put that way, he couldn't quarrel with it, though there was a
challenge about it that chilled him a little. Watched over by his own
daughter (this was what it came to) Paula would be beyond
suspicion--even of Lucile.

Mary, when the scheme was put up to her was no less surprised than
John had been, but she was pleased clear through, and with a
clean-cutting executive skill he had hardly credited her with, she
thought out the details of the plan and revised the rest of their
summer arrangements to fit.

The Dearborn Avenue house should be closed and her father should move out
to the farm. The apple house was now remodeled to a point where it would
accommodate him as well as Aunt Lucile very comfortably. The boys and the
servants could live around in tents and things. She'd want only one maid
for the cott