Rod smiled. Grove's yacht interested him less than the owner. Grove was expanding. Decidedly. Rod had a fanciful vision of his brother as a balloon, swelling and swelling to the ultimate overstrain and collapse. A whimsy, of course. Finance was profitable. Money bred money. Yet it seemed strange that a Norquay could turn his back on Hawk's Nest, its ordered comfort, its atmosphere of security, its leisure and its peaceful beauty, to sweat over making a barrel of money only to spend it on such costly toys. It was even more strange to think that their father abetted and encouraged Grove in this departure from the old accepted way.
"Makes this look like small potatoes, eh?" Rod found Phil grinning at his elbow as they rolled in the Kowloon's wash.
"Must be money in trust companies," Rod observed sardonically. "That's bigger than the Hermes, which old R.S.N. sailed around the Horn."
"I wonder what he'd think of Grove?" Phil murmured.
"I wonder," Rod echoed.
He repeated that mordant query to himself in the course of the evening. Grove brought a dozen people on the Kowloon, a further installment of Deans and Richstons, and several young men and women whom Rod met for the first time, but whose names were familiar enough as people who were "somebody" in B.C. They had dinner aboard, but afterward they took possession of Hawk's Nest, hauled a piano outside and danced on the wide verandah or wandered over the grounds in pairs. Rod detected a livelier tempo than had been common to Hawk's Nest gatherings. They drank a little more freely than he remembered as the usual thing there. By eleven o'clock two or three of the men were quite comfortably "lit up." Rod noticed that, even before Laska drew his attention to them.
"Young Deane and Tommy Richston are tight," she said amusedly. "Look at their eyes. See how very solemn Tommy is."
They were sitting by an open window in the living room, watching the glide and dip and sway of the dancing couples.
"Yes, rather," he replied. "Time to turn off the tap when the guests get pickled."
"It won't hurt them," Laska remarked indifferently. "They generally behave well. Isn't it lovely here, Rod? So clean and fragrant with the woods all about and the sea at your door. I love this old place."