't hold you all," Billy had said, when they were making
their plans for the summer. "If we take the Lodge, there will be an
extra room, and Allyn and Hubert may as well use it. It really won't
make any difference how we divide up. At Quantuck the houses only count
on foggy days."

In fact, it had been Billy's idea, their choosing Quantuck, that summer.
Years before, in his young boyhood, the Farringtons had been there,
season after season, and he had always wanted to get back to the old
place. Again and again he had been prevented, and it was not until this
summer that he had succeeded in carrying out his plans. Now, for the
first time in years, Dr. McAlister had consented to take a long vacation;
Theodora's novel was locked up in the safe at home, waiting for
revision; Hubert was to be with them for three weeks of the time, and
Hope had come on from Helena to make the family circle complete.

To no one of the family had the week before the flitting been absolutely
enjoyable. On one scorching July morning, Phebe and Phebe's own familiar
friend, Isabel St. John, had roused their respective households at four
o'clock in order that they might catch the six-thirty train for New York.
Once there, they betook themselves to Hester Street in order to study the
conditions of life in the East Side. It chanced, however, to be Friday,
market day, and the place was a veritable Babel with the cries of the
hucksters and the shrill clamor of the women elbowing each other about
the push-carts. No one paid any heed to the girls; and on their side,
after a brief inspection they paid heed to but one question, how to get
out of the region as speedily as possible. Accordingly, they went up town
to lunch, strolled about Twenty-third Street for an hour or two before
going to the office of the fresh-air charity, and, late that evening,
reappeared at their own front doors, each with a wan and weary child at
her heels. Isabel's was a boy; Phebe, in deference to the conditions of a
family treaty, had a girl.

For about three weeks, Phebe's table had been heaped with books on
child-study, on pedagogy, on domestic hygiene; her room had been littered
with syllabi on child impressions in every conceivable relation. Phebe
was resolved to be scientific, or die in the attempt. She came nearer
achieving the latter alternative. The struggle began on the first morning
of her new charge. She was up early and ran down to the kitchen to put
the oatmeal over