“Who’s Gar?” asked Nancy.
“He’s my—lifeguard; I’d perish without Garfield Durand. He lives on the next pile of rocks and he’s more fun than a troop. You’ll love Gar, I’m sure. There’s Baldy calling dinner. Baldy is the butler, you know, and he’s the most perfect baldy you ever gazed at. Has a head like the crystal ball in the back yard.”
For a camp, which was really what this summer home was supposed to be, Nancy thought everything about her most elaborate. The house was as heavily built as any city house might be, and the big beamed ceiling in the long dining room, made her think of an old English picture. The butler, Thomas, called Baldy, by the irrepressible Rosalind, rather awed Nancy at first, but, unlike the butlers in fiction, he could smile, and he could bend and he was human, so that after her chair had been adjusted and her water poured, Nancy presently felt quite at ease and enjoyed, rather than feared, her surroundings. Margot sat at Rosalind’s side and Nancy was placed opposite. After all, she thought, one’s simple meals at home were no different from that being served, except that at home things came more promptly and—yes—perhaps they did taste a little better mother’s way. However, the soup was good and the chicken easy to eat, while the dessert was piled high with cream and Nancy ate it—to make her fat.
“Rosalind, you had better have—” Margot was objecting.
“Nop-ee, I’m going to have this,” interrupted Rosalind, who took the overly rich dessert in defiance of ounces more of the much detested fat, which were bound to follow.
“Mrs. Fred phoned that she was detained in the city and so could not be here to greet you, Nancy,” Margot said, as Thomas pulled out her chair, “but I’m sure Rosalind wants you all to herself, so Mrs. Fred need not be anxious.” This little pleasantry was followed up by an effusive reply from Rosalind, who couldn’t really seem to get close enough to Nancy for her own affectionate satisfaction.
“Oh, we’ll be all right, Margot,” she assured the tall woman with the unavoidable horn-rimmed glasses. “We’ve got oodles of things to talk about, and piles of things to do. You won’t mind if I let up on the exercise to-night, will you?”
“But you know, Rosie—”
“’Course I do, Margy,” and Rosalind coaxed prettily. “But I want to entertain Cousin Nancy—”
The smiling assent from Margot seemed unnecessary, for Rosalind was trooping off, with her arm around Nancy’s waist, and her laughter bubbling like the soap-suds Ted loved to blow out of his old corn-cob pipe.