"It's all right," I said, "and we're all happy."
"Thank God!" said father under his breath.
I could not bear the look on his face, and slipped blindly, without excuse, from the room.
It was the following week that John Denton came down to be with us, and hatched his plans with father. They called us in, Bill and me, and laid their schemes before us.
"We have decided," said father, very thin and pale in his armchair, "that children are best left alone, without old people to disturb them. I'm quite all right. In two weeks I shall be younger and better than I have been in twenty years. And I want you and Bill to go away, Mavis. It's time you had your honeymoon, cloudless and solitary, as all honeymoons should be. Old John here has been talking his camp in Canada to me, for an hour steady. And I'm persuaded. I'll get you infants out of the house, and then John and I and that marvelous man-servant of his who is cook and nurse and valet in one person will travel by easy stages and spend a month rusticating in the big woods.
"Can't we go too?" I begged, in a sudden panic.
"You can not!" said Uncle John and father in one breath.
I turned a little helplessly to my husband.
"They don't want us!" I said.
"And we don't want them!" he answered smiling. "You and I are going to Cuba. Just as soon as you can get ready. I've been talking to your father and he agrees with me that the absolute change will do you all the good in the world."