uation made to order for Harriet to take a hand in. She'd sized it up
at a glance, made up her mind in three minutes what was the sensible
thing for them to do, written a note to Florence McCrea in Paris, and
then bided her opportunity to put her idea into effect. She went out
cruising with Rose in the car two or three times, looking at places, but
gave her no indications that she felt more than the most languid
interest in the problem. She could seem less interested in a thing
without being quite impolite, than any one Rose knew.

When she got Florence McCrea's answer to her letter, she took the first
occasion to get Rodney off by himself and talk a little common sense
into him.

"What about where to live, Rodney?" she asked. "Made up your mind about
it yet? I suppose you know how many months there are between the first
of June and the first of October."

"We haven't got much of anywhere," he admitted. "We know we want to live
in the country, that's about all."

"Out in the country just as winter's getting started?" she asked.
"Settling into a new place--Rose with a new baby--everybody else back in
town;--simply no _chance_ of keeping servants? Roddy, old man, you're
entitled to be a babe in the woods, of course. Any man is who does the
kind of work you do. But it is time some one with a little common sense
straightened you out about this."

Harriet couldn't be sure from the length of time he took seeing that his
pipe was properly alight, whether he altogether liked this method of
approach or not.

"Common sense always was a sort of specialty of yours, sis," he said at
last, "and straightening out. You were always pretty good at it." Then,
out of a cloud of his own smoke, "Fire away."

"Well, in the first place;" she said, "remodeling is the slowest work in
the world, and the fussiest. And you can't just tell an architect, with
a wave of the hand, to go ahead. You have to do your own fussing, which
would drive you crazy. If you had your house to-day, you'd be lucky if
the paint was dry and the thing was fit to move into by the first of
September. And next September, if it's blazing hot, won't be exactly the
time for Rose to go ramping around trying to buy furniture for a whole
establishment--because you haven't a stick yourselves, of course--and
getting settled in, hiring servants, getting the thing going. You can't
be sure you'll have till the first of October. Things like that don't
always happen exactly as t