"A bribe, dear friend. I wish to go fishing," she said. "Stephanie has been telling me about her girlhood days here with you, and how you took her on several sacred occasions to a mysterious, dashing stream full of huge bowlders—somewhere deep in the primeval woods——"
"The Dunbar brook, Jim," smiled Stephanie. "Shall we go fishing in the morning? I'm not going to spend all my time fussing with domestic problems."
"The cares of housekeeping sit lightly on her," remarked Helen, as they all strolled toward the porch. "What if the new servants are slack and wasteful? Being a man you wouldn't know; being Steve, she doesn't worry. I see that it's going to devolve on me. Is it possible to run two baths in this house at the same time?"
"Is it?" inquired Stephanie of Cleland. "I forget."
"Yes," he replied, "if you don't draw too much hot water."
"Take yours first, Helen," she said. "I'll sit in this cool library and gossip with Jim for a while."
She unpinned her hat and flung it on a sofa, untied a large box of bonbons, and careless of her charmingly disordered hair, vaulted to a seat on the massive centre table—a favourite perch of hers when a young girl.
Helen lingered to raid the bonbons; Cleland immediately began his pet theme:
"Why do Americans eat candy? Because the nation doesn't know how to cook! The French don't stuff themselves with candy. There isn't, in Paris, a candy-shop to the linear mile! That's because French stomachs, being properly fed with properly and deliciously cooked food, don't crave candy. But in a country noted for its wretched and detestable bread——"
"Oh, you always say that," remarked Stephanie. "Some day I'll go over and find out how much truth there is in your tirades. Meanwhile, I shall consume candy."