dear, and Dad will pay Jordan next month. I didn't say anything
about Cutter, but he begged me to make you _feel_ how wrong it is to let
these things run. You have a splendid allowance, Ned," she was almost
apologetic, "and there's no necessity of running over it, dear!"

"Sure. I'm not going to do that again," Ned said gruffly, uncomfortably.

"That's right, dear! And you will--you'll try to be home for dinner?"

"Sure I'll try!" and Ned was gone, down through the roses and through
the green gate.

Mrs. Toland watched him out of sight. Then she trotted off to Hee's
domain. Sally straggled out into the garden, with Janey and Constance
and the small boy following after. There was great distress because the
little girls were all for tennis, and Keith Borroughs frankly admitted
that he hated tennis.

The Tolands' rambling mansion was built upon so sharp a hill that the
garden beds were bulkheaded like terraces, and the paths were steep.
Roses--delicious great white roses and the apricot-coloured San Rafael
rose--climbed everywhere, and hung in fragrant festoons from the low,
scrub-oak trees that were scattered through the garden. Every vista
ended with the blue bay, and the green gate at the garden's foot opened
directly upon a roadway that hung like a shelf above the water.

Sally and the children gathered nasturtiums and cornflowers and ferns
for the house. The place had been woodland only a few years ago, the
earth was rich with rotting leaves, and all sorts of lovely forest
growths fringed the paths. Groups of young oaks and an occasional bay or
madrone tree broke up any suggestion of formal arrangement, and there
were still wild columbine and mission bells in the shady places.

Presently, to the immense satisfaction of her little sisters, Sally
dismissed them for tennis, and carried the music-mad small boy off to
the old nursery, where he could bang away at an old piano to his heart's
content, while she pasted pictures in her camera book, in a sunny
window. Now and then she cast a look full of motherly indulgence at the
little figure at the piano: the pale, earnest little face; the tumbled
black hair, the bony, big, unchildlike hands.

The morning slipped by, and afternoon came, to find Barbara welcoming
the arriving players at the yacht club, and looking her very prettiest
in a gown of striped scarlet and white, and a white hat. Hello,
Matty--Hello, Enid--Hello, Bobby--and did any one see Miss Page? Ah, how