onal career!"

"No, my dear, but you can help him greatly in it," Miss Jencks
instructed placidly (she was invaluable, was Barbara, when it was a
matter of proper platitude, which flowed from her lips with the ease
of water from a tap--and she believed it, too!) "a man needs a woman
in his home. Her influence--"

"Yes, I know, you have told me that before. But you could stay with
Roger, Miss Jencks, and be that influence," said Margarita sweetly,
"and I could go with Jerry." Was she impish, or only ingenuous, I
wonder? One could never tell.

"How about the baby?" Roger demanded cheerfully.

"I am not going to nurse it any more," said the mother of little Mary
quietly. "Madame said I had better stop it now--it will be better for
my voice. So it will not need me. Dolledge knows all about taking care
of it."

"But, my dear, are you sure it will be good for Mary not to nurse her?
She is not six months old, you know," Miss Jencks suggested mildly.

Margarita leaned her round chin into the cup of her hands and gazed
thoughtfully at her mentor.

"Then why do you not nurse her, dear Miss Jencks?" she asked.

At this Roger and I left the room hastily. I am unable to state what
the late directress of the Governor-General's family said or did!

It was the next day, I remember, that I was called to New York on
business connected with my mother's small affairs, and while there I
was greatly surprised and not a little amused to receive a telegram
from Roger asking me to engage passage for himself, Margarita, Miss
Jencks, Dolledge and the baby, on my own boat, if possible, if not, to
change my sailing to fit theirs. It is only fair to say that Sears,
Bradley and Sears had recently become involved in a complicated
lawsuit of international interests and importance, and Roger took some
pains to inform me of the very handsome retaining-fee which his
knowledge of the workings of English law combined with his proficiency
in French quite justified him in accepting in consideration of his
giving the greater part of his time to this case--a case almost
certain to drag through the winter and require his presence in London
and his constant correspondence with Paris.

I received this information as gravely as he offered it, but, to use
his own phrase, I reserved my decision as to whether the lack of that
same international case would have kept the Bradley menage in New
York.

* * * * *

I stayed in P