“I suppose the yacht isn’t included,” Constance answered. “They’re asking seventy thousand for the house, and there’s a lot of land, you know. The Nelsons live in Detroit and it would be easy to get the details.”
“You said yourself it was a beautiful place when you were there last summer,” Leila resumed, groping in her memory for the reasons with which Constance had fortified her for urging the purchase. “And the golf course up there is a wonder, and the whole place is very exclusive—only the nicest people.”
“I thought you preferred the northeast coast,” her father replied. “What’s sent you back to fresh water?”
“Oh, Dada, I just have to change my mind sometimes! If I kept the same idea very long it would turn bad—like an egg.”
Constance, irritated by Leila’s perfunctory espousal of the proposed investment, tried to signal for silence. But Leila, having undertaken to implant in her father’s mind the desirability of acquiring the cottage at Harbor Hills, was unwilling to drop the subject.
“Poor old Shep never gets any vacation to amount to anything. If we had a place in Michigan he could go up every week-end and get a breath of air. We all of us could have a perfectly grand time.”
“Who’s all?” demanded her father. “You’d want to run a select boarding house, would you?”
“Well, not exactly. But Connie and I could open the place early and stay late, and we’d hope you’d be with us all the time, and Shep, whenever he could get away.”
“Shep, I think this is only a scheme to shake you and me for the summer. Connie and Leila are trying to put something over on us. And of course we can’t stand for any such thing.”
“Of course, Father, the upkeep of such a place is considerable,” Shepherd replied conciliatingly.