is Long Island farm the
following morning and spend the day.

She had visited the place two or three times and had always enjoyed it
immensely there. It wasn't much of a farm, but there was a delightful
old Revolutionary farmhouse on it, with ceilings seven feet high and
casement windows, and the floors of all the rooms on different levels;
and Galbraith, there, was always quite at his best. His sister and her
husband, whom he had brought over from England when he bought the place,
ran it for him. They were the simplest sort of peasant people who had
hardly stirred from their little Surrey hamlet until that meteoric
brother of theirs had summoned them on their breath-taking voyage to
America, and for whom now, on this little Long Island farm, New York
might have been almost as far away as London. Mrs. Flaxman did all the
work of the house and farmyard without the aid of a servant, and her
husband raised vegetables for the New York market.

What the pair really thought of the life John Galbraith led, or of the
guests he sometimes brought out for week-end visits, no one knew. But
the pleasant sort of homely hospitality one always found there was
extremely attractive to Rose, and with Rodney's regular Saturday letter
at hand she'd have accepted the invitation eagerly. As it was, she
answered almost shortly that she couldn't come. Then, contrite, she
hastened to dilute her refusal with an elaboration of regrets and
hastily contrived reasons.

"All right," he said good-humoredly, "I shan't ask any one else, but if
you happen to change your mind call me on the phone in the morning. Tell
me what train you're coming down on and I'll meet you."

She didn't expect to change her mind, but a phonograph did it for her.
This instrument was domesticated across the court somewhere--she had
never bothered to discover just which pair of windows the sound of it
issued from--and it was addicted to fox-trots, comic recitations in
negro dialect, and the melodies of Mr. Irving Berlin. It was jolly and
companionable and Rose regarded it as a friend. But on this Saturday
night, perversely enough, perhaps because its master was in Pittsburgh
on a business trip and hadn't come home as expected, the thing turned
sentimental. It sang _I'm on My Way to Mandalay_, under the impression
that Mandalay was an island somewhere. It played _The Rosary_, done as a
solo on the cornet; and over and over again it sang, with the thickest,
sirupiest sentiment