Well, I'll be dished," said Dwight.

"Sister!" said Ina.

Ninian meditated, his lips set tight and high. It is impossible to trace
the processes of this man. Perhaps they were all compact of the
devil-may-care attitude engendered in any persistent traveller. Perhaps
the incomparable cookery of Lulu played its part.

"I was going to make a trip south this month," he said, "on my way home
from here. Suppose we get married again by somebody or other, and start
right off. You'd like that, wouldn't you--going South?"

"Yes," said Lulu only.

"It's July," said Ina, with her sense of fitness, but no one heard.

It was arranged that their trunks should follow them--Ina would see to
that, though she was scandalised that they were not first to return to
Warbleton for the blessing of Mrs. Bett.

"Mamma won't mind," said Lulu. "Mamma can't stand a fuss any more."

They left the table. The men and women still sitting at the other tables
saw nothing unusual about these four, indifferently dressed,
indifferently conditioned. The hotel orchestra, playing ragtime in
deafening concord, made Lulu's wedding march.

* * * * *

It was still early next day--a hot Sunday--when Ina and Dwight reached
home. Mrs. Bett was standing on the porch.

"Where's Lulie?" asked Mrs. Bett.

They told.

Mrs. Bett took it in, a bit at a time. Her pale eyes searched their
faces, she shook her head, heard it again, grasped it. Her first
question was:

"Who's going to do your work?"

Ina had thought of that, and this was manifest.

"Oh," she said, "you and I'll have to manage."

Mrs. Bett meditated, frowning.

"I left the bacon for her to cook for your breakfasts," she said. "I
can't cook bacon fit to eat. Neither can you."

"We've had our breakfasts," Ina escaped from this dilemma.

"Had it up in the city, on expense?"

"Well, we didn't have much."

In Mrs. Bett's eyes tears gathered, but they were not for Lulu.

"I should think," she said, "I should think Lulie might have had a
little more gratitude to her than this."

On their way to church Ina and Dwight encountered Di, who had left the
house some time earlier, stepping sedately to church in company with
Bobby Larkin. Di was in white, and her face was the face of an angel, so
young, so questioning, so utterly devoid of her sophistication.

"That child," said Ina, "_must_ not see so much of that Larkin boy.
She's just a little, little girl."

"O