squarely. Your modern, economic spasms over the organization of
industrialism are out of place in that delightful, eighteenth century,
plain old interior. They threw _their_ fits over theology!"

The owner of the house nodded. "Yes, you know your period! A
great-great-grandfather of mine, a ministerial person, had left a lot
of books on the nature of the Trinity and Free Will and such. They had
to be moved up to the attic to make room for mine. What books will be
on those shelves a hundred years from now, I wonder?"

"Treatises on psychic analysis, on how to transfer thought without
words, unless I read the signs of the times wrong," Morrison hazarded
a guess.

Molly was bored by this talk and anxious to get the walkers off.
"You'd better be starting if you're going far up on the mountain,
Austin. We have to be back for a tea at Mrs. Neville's, where Sylvia's
to pour. Mrs. Neville would have a thing or two to say to us, if we
made her lose her main drawing card."

"Are you coming, Morrison?" asked Page.

"No, he isn't," said Molly decidedly. "He's going to stay to play to
me on that delicious tin-panny old harpsichordy thing in your 'best
room.' You do call it the 'best room,' don't you? They always do in
New England dialect stories. Grandfather, you have your cards with
you, haven't you? You always have. If you'll get them out, Felix and
Arnold and I'll play whist with you."

Only one of those thus laid hold of, slipped out from her strong
little fingers. Arnold raised himself, joint by joint, from his chair,
and announced that he was a perfect nut-head when it came to whist.
"And, anyhow," he went on insistently, raising his voice as Molly
began to order him back into the ranks--"And, anyhow, I don't want to
play whist! And I do want to see what Page has been up to all this
time he's kept so dark about his goings-on over here. No, Molly, you
needn't waste any more perfectly good language on me. You can boss
everybody else if you like, but I'm the original, hairy wild-man who
gets what he wants."

He strolled off across the old-fashioned garden and out of the gate
with the other two, his attention given as usual to lighting a
cigarette. It was an undertaking of some difficulty on that day of
stiff September wind which blew Sylvia's hair about her ears in
bright, dancing flutters.

They were no more than out of earshot of the group left on the porch,
than Sylvia, as so often happened in her growing acquaintan