"If she keeps on like this, Augustus is hers—if she wants him," Mr. Gerrard Pennington remarked to his wife later in the evening.
"If I could have her all to myself," Mrs. Pennington sighed; "but any impression I may make is neutralised by her association with those Vandegrifts. It is an absurd arrangement, spending half her time down there."
"I think you are rather in the lead, aren't you, my dear?"
Mrs. Pennington shrugged her shoulders, but there was some triumph in her smile. "She is a dear child, in spite of some absurd notions, and I long to see her well and safely settled. I don't quite know in what her charm most lies, but she has it."
"Oh, it's her youth, and the conviction that it is all so jolly well worth while. She is so keen about everything." There was an odd twinkle in Mr. Pennington's eyes, usually so piercing beneath their bushy grey brows. Margaret Elizabeth called him Uncle Gerry. It was amusing. He liked it, and enjoyed playing the part of Uncle Gerry. "Of course she's bound to get over that. Still, I shouldn't be in any haste to settle her."
His wife thought of her brother, the Professor of Archæology, now in the Far East. "It is queer, but Dick never has," she said, answering the first part of his sentence. But when she spoke again, it was to say energetically: "The Towers needs a mistress, and August is irreproachable. Really, I am devoted to the boy."
Mr. Pennington found this amusing.
"If only it were a colonial house. It is handsome, but I prefer simpler lines," Mrs. Pennington continued meditatively.
The Towers was a combination of feudal castle and Swiss châlet erected thirty years before by the parents of Augustus, and occupying a commanding position on Sunset Ridge. The irreverent sometimes referred to it as the Salt Shakers.
Margaret Elizabeth meanwhile, in the solitude of her own room, was asking herself questions, for which she found no answers.