elf to with
Wallace Hood seemed fantastic. Between two persons like her father and
Paula a meddler could make such an incalculable amount of mischief. All
the current maxims of conduct would support her in a refusal to
interfere. It was exclusively their affair, wasn't it? Why not let them
settle it in their own way?

Yet there were other hours when she put her procrastinations down to
sheer cowardice. This occurred whenever she got a letter from her aunt at
Hickory Hill.

Miss Wollaston was a dutiful but exceedingly cautious correspondent, but
beneath the surface of her brisk little bulletins were many significant
implications. Rush had made two or three trips to town for consultations
with Martin Whitney ... Doctor Steinmetz, presence unaccounted for, had
been a guest one day at lunch... Graham's father had come out one
Saturday and after he had been exhaustively shown over the place the men
had talked until all hours.... The building program was to be curtailed
for the present; to be resumed, perhaps when prices weren't so high nor
labor so hard to get.... The new Holstein calves had come. Mary had been
told, hadn't she, of the decision to constitute the herd in this manner
instead of buying all milking cows.... Sylvia, declaring that Rush and
Graham had got too solemn to live with, had finally obeyed her mother
and gone home to the Stannards' summer place at Lake Geneva.

Mary read these letters to Paula as they came in the hope of provoking
some question that would make it possible to tell John Wollaston's wife
the tale of his necessities, but nothing of the sort happened. Paula did
observe (a little uneasily?) apropos of Steinmetz' visit:

"John says he's taken quite a fancy to him. He told me he was going to
get him to come out if he could."

The other casts brought up nothing whatever.

As it happened Mary paid dear for her procrastination. Paula sent her
into town one day with a long list of errands, a transparently factitious
list, which, taken in connection with an unusual interest she displayed
in the item of lunch, made it more than sufficiently plain to Mary that
for the day she wasn't wanted at Ravinia.

She concealed, successfully she thought, the shock she felt at these new
tactics of Paula's, studied the list and said she thought she should be
able to return on the three o'clock train. She made a point however of
not coming back until the four-fifteen. It was nearly six before she got
back to t