“I could make her care from sheer force of imitation if I could get this Langley stuff out of her head.”
“Granted. But if she does happen to be in love with Langley?”
“He’s no person for her to marry.”
“You can’t do it by dogma, my dear.”
Anthony shook himself like an impatient puppy.
“Well, I’ll be damned if I don’t find some way to do it.”
“Love is queer,” reflected Marjorie, “in its effect on people. Now you show it principally by a marked increase in profanity.”
Anthony grinned and left her.
The cottage stood well back from a road which wound itself around a series of lakes and up steep hills into a district which was almost mountainous. Anthony knew every foot of the country and loved it as well as his cottage which had been the scene of so many pleasant parties, both his own and Marjorie’s. It was the place above all which he would have chosen for this biggest adventure of his life. The place which Maud had taken was a few miles farther up the road but within easy distance. There was every reason for Anthony’s contemplative smile as he swung down the wooded road.
The Williams party arrived a few days later with some bustle. It was Maud’s first venture into country residences and though it was on a small scale it appealed to her immensely. Only her sudden acquaintance with Marjorie Clapp had given her courage for the move, for the district in the hills was a refuge for a society somewhat older and better acquainted than Maud’s town crowd. She and Harvey had taken the children away for the summer once before, but going to a summer hotel was a different and incomparably insignificant thing beside the pride of belonging to a genuine summer colony. She had asked Mrs. Clapp a little diffidently about places in the hills and Mrs. Clapp had been unexpectedly helpful—even giving her the name of a special cottage which could probably be rented. An unpretentious little cottage enough but pleasant to Maud because the Hilltons, the Straights, the Clapps and the Morrises wore their ginghams and sun hats within a radius of ten miles, pleasant to Jackie because he had been promised a rabbit, pleasant to Harvey on account of a neighboring trout stream, and pleasant to Horatia because the woods around it offered refuges and solace.