The Key Note: A Novel

by Clara Louise Burnham

"His name is Barrison."

"You wired him to do this?"

"Yes, Mamma."

"How could you ask it? Is he a servant?"

"No, Mamma, he is a professional singer taking his vacation at the island."

Mrs. Wilbur looked at the girl closely. "You must have become rather friendly with him to ask such a favor?"

Mrs. Lowell glanced up from a glove she was mending. "Everybody is friendly at the island, Mrs. Wilbur. It is one of the assets of the simple life. As one of the men at the Inn said: 'Every time you go out the door, you wade up to your knees in the milk of human kindness.'"

Mrs. Wilbur regarded her coldly. "An inexperienced schoolgirl cannot discriminate," she said. "I felt all the time that Diana should not go there."

Her dominating tone was significant of the relation she, contrary to the experience of most American mothers, had succeeded in retaining with her daughter. The average American girl of Diana's age would have had no difficulty in telling her mother that the expected boy would be embarrassed by the presence of a stranger and requesting her, more or less agreeably, to return to her apartments. Not so Diana. Her mother plied her now with additional questions about Herbert Loring's heir.