way this year, for I've fixed
up with Doria and Adrian to spend August at Northlands."

"Why didn't you tell me so at once? Why did you ask me whether we were
going away?"

"Because I knew we weren't," she answered.

In putting two questions at the same time, I blundered. The first was a
poser and might have elicited some interesting revelation of feminine
mental process. In forlorn hope I repeated it.

"Why, I've told you, stupid," said Barbara. "You've no objection to
their coming, have you?"

"Good Lord, no. I'm delighted."

"From the way you've argued, any one would have thought you didn't want
them."

Outraged by the illogic, I gasped; but she broke into a laugh.

"You silly old Hilary," she said. "Don't you see that Doria must get her
trousseau together and Adrian must find a house or a flat, that has to
be decorated and furnished, and the poor child hasn't a mother or any
sensible woman in the world to look after her but me?"

"I see," said I, "that you intend having the time of your life."

* * * * *

My prevision proved correct. In August came the engaged couple and every
day Barbara took them up to town and whirled them about from house-agent
to house-agent until she found a flat to suit them, and then from
emporium to emporium until she found furniture to suit the flat, and
from raiment-vendor to raiment-vendor until she equipped Doria to suit
the furniture. She used to return almost speechless with exhaustion; but
pantingly and with the glaze of victory in her eyes, she fought all her
battles o'er again and told of bargains won. In the meantime had it not
been for Susan, I should have lived in the solitude of an anchorite. We
spent much time in the garden which we (she less conscious of irony than
I) called our desert island. I was Robinson Crusoe and she was Man
Friday, and on the whole we were quite happy; perhaps I should have been
happier in a temperature of 80 deg. in the shade if I had not been forced to
wear the Polar bear rug from the drawing-room in representation of
Crusoe's goatskins. I did suggest that I should be Robinson Crusoe's
brother, who wore ordinary flannels, and that she should be Woman
Wednesday. But Susan saw through the subterfuge and that game didn't
work. One afternoon, however, Barbara, returning earlier than usual,
caught us at it and expressing horror and indignation at the uses to
which the bearskin was put, metaphorically whipped me