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“Why, I don’t know, dear!” she said pleasantly, carrying the box to her wardrobe.

“Does she plan to stay here?” George asked, with a reasonable air, carefully transferring letters, pocket-book, and watch-case from one vest to another.

“George, when does Mamma ever plan ANYTHING!” Mary reminded him, with elaborate gentleness.

There was a short silence. The night was very sultry, and no air stirred the thin window-curtains. The room, with its rich litter of glass and silver, its dark wood and bright hangings, seemed somehow hot and crowded. Mary flung her dark cloud of hair impatiently back, as she sat at her dressing table. Brushing was too hot a business tonight.

“I confess I think I have a right to ask what your mother proposes to do,” George said presently, with marked politeness.

“Oh, Georgie! DON’T be so ridiculous!” Mary protested impatiently. “You know what Mamma is!”

“I may be ridiculous,” George conceded, magnificently, “but I fail to see–“

“I don’t mean that,” Mary said hastily. “But need we decide tonight?” she added with laudable calm. “It’s so HOT, dearest, and I am so sleepy. Mamma could go to Beach Meadow, I suppose?” she finished unthinkingly.

This was a wrong move. George was disappearing into his dressing-room at the moment, and did not turn back. Mary put out all the lights but one, turned down the beds, settled on her pillows with a great sigh of relief. But George, returning in a trailing wrapper, was mighty with resolution.

“I mean to make just one final remark on this subject, Mary,” said George, flashing on three lights with one turn of the wrist, “but you may as well understand me. I mean it! I don’t propose to have your mother at Beach Meadow, not for a single night–not for a day! She demoralizes the boys, she has a very bad effect on the nurse. I sympathize with Miss Fox, and I refuse to allow my children to be given candy, and things injurious to their constitutions, and to be kept up until late hours, and to have their first perceptions of honor and truth misled–“

“George!”

“Well,” said George, after a brief pause, more mildly, “I won’t have it.”

“Then–but she can’t stay here, George. It will spoil our whole summer.”

“Exactly,” George assented. There was another pause.

“I’ll talk to Mamma–she may have some plan,” Mary said at last, with a long sigh.

Mamma had no plan to unfold on the following day, and a week and then ten days went by without any suggestion of change on her part. The weather was very hot, and Lizzie complained more than once that Mrs. Honeywell must have her iced coffee and sandwiches at four and that breakfast, luncheon, and dinner regularly for three was not at all like getting two meals for two every day, and besides, there was another bedroom to care for, and the kitchen was never in order! Mary applied an unfailing remedy to Lizzie’s case, and sent for a charwoman besides. Less easily solved were other difficulties.

George, for example, liked to take long motoring trips out of the city, on warm summer evenings. He ran his own car, and was never so happy as when Mary was on the driver’s seat beside him, where he could amuse her with the little news of the day, or repeat to her long and, to Mary, unintelligible business conversations in which he had borne a part.

But Mamma’s return spoiled all this. Obviously, the little lady couldn’t be left to bounce about alone in the tonneau. If Mary joined her there, George would sit silently, immovably, in the front seat, chewing his cigar, his eyes on the road. Only when they had a friend or two with them did Mary enjoy these drives.

Mamma had an unlucky habit of scattering George’s valuable books carelessly about the house, and George was fussy about his books. And she would sometimes amuse herself by trying roll after roll on the piano-player, until George, perhaps trying to read in the adjoining library, was almost frantic. And she mislaid his telephone directory, and took telephone messages for him that she forgot to deliver, and insisted upon knowing why he was late for dinner, in spite of Mary’s warning, “Let him change and get his breath Mamma, dear,–he’s exhausted. What does it matter, anyway?”