"Of course," Rod answered. "What shall it be?"
"Suggest to him that it would be pleasant to have me up at Hawk's Nest for a few weeks."
She regarded him thoughtfully, her lips slightly parted. Rod was puzzled. He hesitated.
"Will you, Rod?"
"Certainly. But—but why don't you just come? Simply say you want to—and come."
"It isn't quite so simple as that," she explained. "I couldn't go unless your father rather made a point of it to Grove. Grove's funny. He isn't at all keen on me going there, except when we cruise up on a week-end. And I'd like to go there and stay awhile, quietly. I'm fed up with Vancouver. I'm tired. I want to rest."
"You can't think what a giddy whirl we live in," she went on presently. "Dinner parties, general hilarity; just one thing after another. One has to go whether one feels up to it or not. One gets so weary of it. Get your father to have me come to Hawk's Nest, Rod dear."
Rod promised.
She went off on another tack after that. With a touch of malice she brightly recounted the quasi-scandal pertaining to certain people in their set, people Rod knew slightly. It seemed to afford her ironic amusement.
"But," Rod observed in comment on a rather piquant anecdote concerning a pretty widow and a man of family who cut a big figure in local industry, "that's pretty raw if it's true. And if it's just gossip, it's rotten nasty gossip."