went laughing away. And in the minute areas of her consciousness
she said to herself that Bobby would be more in love with her than ever
because she had risked all to go with him; and that Cornish ought to be
distinctly attracted to her because she had not stayed. She was as
primitive as pollen.

Ina was vexed. She said so, pouting in a fashion which she should have
outgrown with white muslin and blue ribbons, and she had outgrown none
of these things.

"That just spoils croquet," she said. "I'm vexed. Now we can't have a
real game."

From the side-door, where she must have been lingering among the
waterproofs, Lulu stepped forth.

"I'll play a game," she said.

* * * * *

When Cornish actually proposed to bring some music to the Deacons', Ina
turned toward Dwight Herbert all the facets of her responsibility. And
Ina's sense of responsibility toward Di was enormous, oppressive,
primitive, amounting, in fact, toward this daughter of Dwight Herbert's
late wife, to an ability to compress the offices of stepmotherhood into
the functions of the lecture platform. Ina was a fountain of admonition.
Her idea of a daughter, step or not, was that of a manufactured product,
strictly, which you constantly pinched and moulded. She thought that a
moral preceptor had the right to secrete precepts. Di got them all. But
of course the crest of Ina's responsibility was to marry Di. This verb
should be transitive only when lovers are speaking of each other, or the
minister or magistrate is speaking of lovers. It should never be
transitive when predicated of parents or any other third party. But it
is. Ina was quite agitated by its transitiveness as she took to her
husband her incredible responsibility.

"You know, Herbert," said Ina, "if this Mr. Cornish comes here _very_
much, what we may expect."

"What may we expect?" demanded Dwight Herbert, crisply.

Ina always played his games, answered what he expected her to answer,
pretended to be intuitive when she was not so, said "I know" when she
didn't know at all. Dwight Herbert, on the other hand, did not even play
her games when he knew perfectly what she meant, but pretended not to
understand, made her repeat, made her explain. It was as if Ina _had_ to
please him for, say, a living; but as for that dentist, he had to please
nobody. In the conversations of Dwight and Ina you saw the historical
home forming in clots in the fluid wash of the communit