"Yes, with a few renovations in mind and body. I'll tell you about it as we go along."
When Mrs. Wilbur went out on the Inn piazza and was assailed with the island sights and odors, the snowy daisy drifts, the dark evergreens, the rock-lashed foam dragging at the pebbles and flinging them back with a never-ceasing crescendo and diminuendo, the soaring, sweeping gulls above and beneath the blue, she did not speak for a time, and it was a place where her lorgnette failed.
Léonie, however, kept up a joyous undertone. "Mais, c'est comme chez moi. C'est vraiment comme chez moi, et Mr. Beel, he will take me to see ze poisson."
"Mr. Beel" kept his word, and not once, but many times, did Mrs. Wilbur look about vainly for her maid in a place where there was no bell to ring for her, and no clocks for her to see when she was without, and Bill's motor was running up and down the road in such a convenient way for him to stop and take on an eager passenger, for whom no fishing boat was too dirty, and who could swim as well as any fish in the bay.
"Do let her go, Mamma," Diana said one morning when they were alone. "She is having a real vacation. When you are once attired and your hair is dressed, can I not perform any other office for you?"
"But I don't know which is the maid, Léonie or I," said Mrs. Wilbur. "First she had to have a sweater and I sent for that. Then she wanted a bathing-suit and I sent for that. Then she bought herself some fishing tackle and, if she can't get out in a boat, she sits on the wharf with her feet hanging over and fishes for those—those—"
"Cunners?" suggested Diana.
"Yes; and she knows every one of the island boys, and how does she know when I need her? She doesn't think anything about it."
"That's it," returned Diana, nodding. "She has lost her head. That is what we all do. You will, too, Mamma. I heard you laughing and laughing with Mr. Kelly yesterday."
"He is such a droll creature," said Mrs. Wilbur, with a reminiscent smile. "It's such a queer place here," she went on with a puzzled brow. "You could put this whole Inn into the ballroom at Newport, and there isn't space enough to turn around in the little rooms; yet out of doors it is all space, and something in the air makes you want to run and jump. I might as well tell you, Diana, my mind is just getting set at rest on the subject of Mr. Barrison. Your craze for this place seemed unnatural, and when I first saw him in Boston, I suspected that he was the cause." The lady met her daughter's calm eyes which contradicted her changing color.