"I think that would be the least, Richard," his mother approved. "I believe I will go with you," she condescended to Harriet, "after all, Isabelle was my daughter-in-law, and the mother of my grandchildren!"
"And I won't go to California or Bermuda or any-where else unless Ladybird comes!" Nina burst out, with a broken sob.
"Nonsense!" her father began harshly. Harriet said:
"Bermuda? Is there a plan for Bermuda?"
"I suggested it for a few weeks," Richard said, frowning, "but I don't propose to have Nina invite a group of friends. That isn't exactly the idea."
"We could ask Mrs. Tabor," Harriet said, soothingly; "it is right in the middle of the season, and perhaps she will feel she can hardly spare the time. But I'm sure that if she can--"
"If I ask her, she'll go," Nina said, in a sulky, confident undertone.
Harriet had her doubts, but she did not express them. A month at Nassau, in the undiluted company of Nina and her grandmother, was enough to appall even Harriet's stout heart.
The event proved her right, for while Ida Tabor flew at once to her disconsolate little friend, and assured Richard with tears in her eyes that she would do anything in the world to help him, she weakened when the actual test arrived.
"If just you and I and your dear grandmother were going, dearest girl," she said to Nina, "then it would be perfect. But as long as Miss Field, who is perfectly charming and conscientious and all that, feels that she must accompany us, why--you and I would never be a moment alone, sweetheart, you know that! I DON'T like to think that it's jealousy--"