out there ... But I haven't a minute
of course."

Mary observed that she didn't see what good it would do to be told in
person what Paula had just learned over the telephone. She could drive
out there herself if there was any point in it, during the hour when
Paula was engaged with her dressmaker.

Paula jumped at this suggestion. She was one of those persons whom
telephones never quite convince. So Mary, rather glad of the errand,
though convinced of its futility so far as Paula's designs were
concerned, drove out to the Fullerton Avenue house and presently found
herself in a small neat parlor talking to a neat old lady who was not,
perhaps, as old as she looked, about Anthony March.

For anything that bore upon the obtainability of his service for the
Ravinia piano the telephone conversation would have done as well. His
mother had seen him for only a short time, a little more than a week ago
and judged from what he then said that he was upon the point of going
away, though not for a long absence--a month, perhaps. She had not asked
where he meant to go and he had volunteered nothing. It was possible that
he did not know himself.

Mary remained in doubt, for the first five minutes or so of her call,
whether the stiff guarded precision of this was a mark of hostility to
the whole Wollaston clan or whether it was nothing but undiluted New
England reserve. She ventured a tentative, "I suppose he didn't say
especially why he was going," and on getting a bare negative in reply,
went on, a little breathlessly:--"I didn't mean that impertinently;--only
all of us were very much interested in him and we liked him too well,
especially father and I, to be content to lose track of him. I hope he
wasn't ill;--didn't go away because of that."

"He told me that he was not," Mrs. March answered. "Though if I might
have had my way with him, I would have put him to bed for a week.
However," she added, with a fine smile, "I never did have my way with him
and neither has his father had his. And I judge it to be as well that we
have not."

No, there was no hostility about it. She perceived the genuineness in her
visitor's concern and was perhaps really touched by it. But even so she
was sparing of details. Anthony had never lived a life regulated by rule
and habit. He worked at his music much too hard when the call, as she
termed it, was upon him, and obviously quite forgot to take proper care
of himself. And then he went away, as