“Let us be diplomatic,” said I, when she had come down stairs. “Let us go for a long walk.”
The hideous “upside down music” assailed us until we were fully a half a mile away.
“Ethel,” said I, “we haven’t gone about this matter of keeping Minerva in the right way.”
“Meaning what?” said Ethel.
“Meaning that we are trying to make her like a thing she does not understand. The country is an unknown land to her. We must try to make her acquainted with it, and perhaps she will love it so much that we will have hard work getting her to go back with us.”
“Well, goodness, that is hardly worth striving for,” said Ethel. “There are only three months up here, but there are nine months in the city, and we want her there.”
“Well, we won’t educate her up to that point, then, but we must do something to make her more contented. She is just as much a human being as you and I, and I dare say that her summer is just as much to her as ours is to us. We are depriving her of recreation pier amusements, of ice cream, of band concerts, and what are we giving her in return? We ought to go out and get some one of her own colour to come and call on her.”
“Don’t be absurd, Philip. Minerva is not a farce.”
“No, she is only getting to be a tragedy. But I’m not absurd. Next to Minerva’s love for the city is her love for people. If we can’t make her love the country, we may be able to make her love the people of the country, and I am going to ask Bert if there is not some respectable man or woman who could be hired to come here and call on Minerva every day.”
Ethel looked at me expecting to see a twinkle or so in one or another of my eyes, but I was not thinking of twinkling. I never was so much in earnest. Minerva was plainly sorry that she had been impertinent and I was going to be eminently just.