from the first, several distinct lines of cleavage
were established in the family party during the next fortnight. Arnold
imperiously demanded a complete vacation from "lessons," and when, it
was indolently granted, he spent it incessantly with Judith, the two
being always out of doors and usually joyously concocting what in any
but the easy-going, rustic plainness of the Marshall mode of life
would have been called mischief. Mrs. Marshall, aided by the others
in turn, toiled vigorously between the long rows of vegetables and
a little open shack near by, where, on a superannuated but still
serviceable cook-stove, she "put up," for winter use, an endless
supply of the golden abundance which, Ceres-like, she poured out every
year from the Horn of Plenty of her garden. Sylvia, in a state of
hypnotized enchantment, dogged her Aunt Victoria's graceful footsteps
and still more graceful, leisurely halts; Lawrence bustled about on
his own mysterious business in a solitary and apparently exciting
world of his own which was anywhere but in La Chance; and Professor
Marshall, in the intervals of committee work at the University, now
about to open, alternated between helping his wife, playing a great
deal of very noisy and very brilliant music on the piano, and
conversing in an unpleasant voice with his sister.

Mr. Rollins, for whom, naturally, Arnold's revolt meant unwonted
freedom, was for the most part invisible, "seeing the sights of La
Chance, I suppose," conjectured Aunt Victoria indifferently, in
her deliciously modulated voice, when asked what had become of the
sandy-haired tutor. And because, in the intense retirement and
rustication of this period, Mrs. Marshall-Smith needed little
attention paid to her toilets, Pauline also was apparently enjoying an
unusual vacation. A short time after making the conjecture about her
stepson's tutor, Aunt Victoria had added the suggestion, level-browed,
and serene as always, "Perhaps he and Pauline are seeing the sights
together."

Sylvia, curled on a little stool at her aunt's feet, turned an
artless, inquiring face up to her. "What _are_ the 'sights' of La
Chance, Auntie?" she asked.

Her father, who was sitting at the piano, his long fingers raised
as though about to play, whirled about and cut in quickly with an
unintelligible answer, "Your Aunt Victoria refers to non-existent
phenomena, my dear, in order to bring home to us the uncouth
provinciality in which we live."

Aunt V