"I'm sorry that the storm kept your mother at home to-night," she said. "I suppose it's her rheumatism. You ought to take her to the Hot Springs, Sidney."
"She's going to Biarritz this summer," said Sidney stolidly, reluctantly withdrawing himself from the plover.
"I wish I could, but Johnstone likes to sit on the edge of a stream back here in the woods and try and hypnotize minnows. We only took a flying trip abroad last fall; it's terrible to have a naturalist for a husband!"
"I thought Astry's taste ran to curio hunting," said Dr. Macclesfield. "I fancied him like the man who pickled a rattlesnake in peach-brandy and brought him home in his wife's hat-box."
"On the contrary," said Astry, "Eva's only interview with the Serpent had to do with the famous apple; I might add that she didn't give me the core."
"I don't think I should mind the pickled serpents," retorted Eva, "but he keeps dried toads in his library!"
"I know," said the doctor, "and also grasshoppers; he's studied Pharaoh's epoch."
"Oh, anything to be rid of grasshoppers," said Pamela. "We had a plague of them in Newport last summer; they obscured the sea when they rose from the grass. I believe poor, dear Sidney swallowed one."
"Beg pardon," said Sidney seriously, "it wasn't a grasshopper, Cousin Pamela; it was a fly."
"Eh?" said Dr. Macclesfield.