the letter into her desk.
"You've had string enough, my fine fellow; now it's my turn. If I had
known you would have stayed behind in Paris all these months and kept
me waiting here I'd have seen you safe aboard the steamer. The hotel
opens in June, does it? Well, I can just about stand it here until
then; after that I'd go mad. This place bores me to death."

CHAPTER XVI

THE BEGINNING OF THE EBB

Spring has come and gone. The lilacs and crocuses, the tulips and
buttercups, have bloomed and faded; the lawn has had its sprinkling of
dandelions, and the duff of their blossoms has drifted past the
hemlocks and over the tree-tops. The grass has had its first cutting;
the roses have burst their buds and hang in clusters over the arbors;
warm winds blow in from the sea laden with perfumes from beach and
salt-marsh; the skies are steely blue and the cloud puffs drift lazily.
It is summer-time--the season of joy and gladness, the season of
out-of-doors.

All the windows at Yardley are open; the porch has donned an
awning--its first--colored white and green, shading big rocking-chairs
and straw tables resting on Turkish rugs. Lucy had wondered why in all
the years that Jane had lived alone at Yardley she had never once
thought of the possibilities of this porch. Jane had agreed with her,
and so, under Lucy's direction, the awnings had been put up and the
other comforts inaugurated. Beneath its shade Lucy sits and reads or
embroiders or answers her constantly increasing correspondence.

The porch serves too as a reception-room, the vines being thick and the
occupants completely hidden from view. Here Lucy often spreads a small
table, especially when Max Feilding drives over in his London drag from
Beach Haven on Barnegat beach. On these occasions, if the weather is
warm, she refreshes him with delicate sandwiches and some of her late
father's rare Scotch whiskey (shelved in the cellar for thirty years)
or with the more common brands of cognac served in the old family
decanters.

Of late Max had become a constant visitor. His own ancestors had made
honorable records in the preceding century, and were friends of the
earlier Cobdens during the Revolution. This, together with the fact
that he had visited Yardley when Lucy was a girl--on his first return
from Paris, in fact--and that the acquaintance had been kept up while
he was a student abroad, was reason enough for his coming with such
frequency.

His drag, more