"I think we ought to get out of Mr. Greggs' way," declared Winnie briskly. "Carpenters have small patience with women and their housekeeping habits. They think we're interfering when we only want to keep 'em from driving nails in the mahogany tables. And if they're going to ruin the hall rug with their bricks and mortar I, for one, don't want to be here to see it."
"Oh, Winnie, you fraud!" Mrs. Willis spoke merrily. "You are not worrying about the hall rug—I know you too well. You're siding with Hugh and you are both conspiring to wreck the household budget a second time. I had all the luxury one woman is entitled to last year in the sanitarium—from now on I intend to consider expenses and a summer away from home isn't to be thought of."
"Your health is worth more than dollars and cents," said Winnie sagely.
"I'm not going to take music lessons this vacation," offered Rosemary. "That ought to help, Mother."
"If I can arrange it so you can leave the house while the alterations are being put through and yet keep the living expenses down to your stipulated level—will you go, Mother?" said Doctor Hugh artfully.
"Can you come, too?" countered his mother.
"Well—part of the time at least," he temporized.
A sudden picture of her orderly quiet home in the hands of the loud-talking, aggressively cheerful town carpenter and his helpers, the gash in the hall letting in dirt and flies, with the attendant bustle and confusion that go with artisan work, flashed across Mrs. Willis' vision. Sarah and Shirley must be constantly admonished to keep out of mischief and danger, Winnie placated when her domain should be encroached upon. And the noise of hammers and saws and files!
"I have only two objections to going away, Hugh," said Mrs. Willis quietly. "One is leaving you and the other is the expense."
"Then it is as good as settled," declared Doctor Hugh, rolling up the blue prints and snapping an elastic around them as though he snapped his ideas into place with the same deft movement.