The Weymans were finishing dinner at Wild Acres the night of Anne’s and Glenn’s and Ariel’s visit to the exhibition. Ariel was dining with Grandam in the attic apartment. Glenn had surprised the others by announcing his summer plans and the change he had made in them. In January he had sought and procured for himself a counselorship at a summer camp for boys in Canada. But now, it seemed, he wanted to get onto a paper, and without mentioning it to his family he had negotiated with Mr. Adams, an editor on the World, for a job on his staff, and landed it. It only remained to get out of the counselorship.
But Mrs. Weyman did not look the “rather pleased” that Glenn had so confidently expected, and as for Hugh,—Glenn thought to himself that old Hugh was looking deuced funny.
“I don’t quite understand all this raised eyebrow stuff!” Glenn protested. “If it’s that you don’t want me around so much, well, I can board in New York, and still save something toward next year’s expenses, I suppose.”
“Don’t be silly, Glenn!” Mrs. Weyman was looking at him speculatively. “Anne and I’ll be in Maine, so you won’t be any burden to us, in any case. There’ll just be you and Hugh and Grandam here. Unless we persuade Grandam to go with us. But she won’t be persuaded. So it’ll be you three. Hugh will be glad enough of your company. I was only thinking of your obligation to the camp. But if it can be arranged—”
“And don’t you see,” Glenn urged, interrupting in his eagerness, “if I am going into journalism, Hugh, this will be a much more profitable summer? Enderly put me on to the idea. He thinks it’ll be invaluable as experience. I’ll be all the sooner self-supporting if I get some practical experience behind me.”
“All right,” Hugh agreed. “That is, if you can get out of the camp work honorably. Grandam and you and I—and Ariel will keep house together. Ariel seems definitely to have made up her mind to stay by Grandam this summer. Keep her job.”
“Joan Nevin invited her to go to Switzerland with her. Did you know that, Glenn? And that she refused?” His mother was looking at him oddly. “Is that why—did she know you’d be here? Did you and she—” Mrs. Weyman broke off, but Glenn answered as though she had finished her question.
“No, we didn’t,” he said emphatically. But now it was Hugh who thought that Glenn was looking deuced funny. At any rate it was the first time he remembered ever seeing his brother blush.
“Has Joan really invited Ariel to Switzerland with her?” Anne exclaimed. “And she’s not going! Why, Grandam ought to insist on her going. And you, Hugh! You must make her go. What a chance! It’s just that Ariel is too unsophisticated to know what it means, I guess. Think of the contacts! Does she know about Doctor Steiner’s colony? How tremendously swank it is?”
“‘Swank’ is very much the wrong word,” Mrs. Weyman protested. “Fashion and money don’t help one to get in there. Authentic personality and accomplishment are the open sesame. And of course Ariel doesn’t understand. How should she! It’s just as well, however, for she’d be frightfully at a loss. Joan’s even suggesting it was strange. I know that she did it for you, Hugh. It was very generous. Shall we have coffee on the terrace?”