"Makes me so sick," grumbled Billy, who looked extremely pretty in a Chinese coat of blue and purple embroideries; "every time I want to move I'll have to ask Aunt Vera if I may have a car! No fun at all!"
"Loads of horses and cars up there, my dear," Rachael said pacifically. She was quivering from head to foot with nervous excitement; the next few hours were all-important to her. And, under the pressure of her own great emotions, Billy seemed only rather pitiful and young to-day, and even Clarence less a conscious tyrant, and more a blundering boy, than he had seemed. She bore them no ill will after these seven hard years; indeed a great peace and kindliness pervaded her spirit and softened her manner toward them both. Her marriage had been a great disappointment, composed of a thousand small disappointments, but she was surprised to find that some intangible and elementary emotion was about to make this parting strangely hard.
"Yes, but it's not the same thing," Billy raged. Rachael began a low-voiced reassurance to which the younger woman listened reluctantly, scowling over her omelette, and interposing an occasional protest.
"Oh, yap--yap--yap! My God, I do get tired of hearing you two go on and on and on!" Clarence presently burst out angrily. "If you don't want to go, Billy, say so. I'm sick of the whole thing, anyway!"
"You know very well I never wanted to go," Billy answered. And because, being now committed to the Villalonga visit, she perversely dreaded it, she pursued aggrievedly, "I'd EVER so much rather have gone to California, Dad!"
How sure the youngster was of her power, Rachael thought, watching him instantly soften under his daughter's skilful touch.
"For five cents," he said eagerly, "I'd wire Vera, and you and I'd beat it to Santa Barbara! What do you say?"
"And if Rachael promised to be awfully good, she could come, too!" Billy laughed. But the girl's gay patronage was never again to be extended to Rachael Breckenridge.
"You couldn't disappoint Vera now," she protested.
"Oh, Lord! make some objections!" Clarence growled.