Roddy. You're getting on perfectly
splendidly. You'll be at the head of the bar out here in ten years, if
you keep on. Frank Crawford was telling me about you the other day.
You've settled down, and we thought you never would. It was a corking
move, your taking this house, just because it made you settle down. You
can earn forty thousand dollars next year, just with your practise, if
you want to. But if you pull up and go to live in a barn somewhere, and
stop seeing anybody--people that count, I mean ..."

Rodney grunted. "You're beyond your depth, sis," he said. "Come back
where you don't have to swim. The expense isn't a capital consideration,
I'll admit that. Now go on from there."

"That's like old times," she observed with a not ill-humored grimace. "I
wonder if you talk to Rose like that. Oh, I know the house is rather
solemn and absurd. It's Florence herself all over, that's the size of
it, and I suppose you are getting pretty well fed up with it. But what
does that matter for six months more? Heavens! You won't know where
you're living. But the place is comfortable, and there's room in it for
nurses and all and the best doctor in town in the line you'll want, is
right around the corner. And, as I say, when your troubles are over and
you know what you want ..."

He pocketed his pipe and got up out of this chair.

"There's something in it," he admitted. "I'll think it over."

"Better cable Florence as soon as you can," she advised. "She'll want to
know ..."

Rose protested when the plan for living six months more in Florence
McCrea's house was broached to her. She made the best fight she could.
But Harriet's arguments, re-stated now by Rodney with full conviction,
were too much for her. When she broke down and cried, as she couldn't
help doing, Rodney soothed and comforted her, assured her that this
notion of hers about the expensiveness of it all, was just a
notion--obsession was the word he finally came to--which she must
struggle against as best she could. She'd see things in a truer
proportion afterward.

Then it came out that he had made all his plans for a long summer
vacation. There was no court work in July and August anyway. He was
going to carry her off to a quiet little place out on Cape Cod that he
knew about, and just luxuriate in her; have her all to himself--not a
soul they knew about them. They would lie about in the sands all day,
building air castles. If she got tired of him, any person s