r (at least visibly) interfere
with the plans of their married children; and the difficulty of
adjusting this respect for May's independence with the exigency of Mr.
Welland's claims could be overcome only by the exercise of an ingenuity
which left not a second of Mrs. Welland's own time unprovided for.

"Of course I'll drive with Papa--I'm sure Newland will find something
to do," May said, in a tone that gently reminded her husband of his
lack of response. It was a cause of constant distress to Mrs. Welland
that her son-in-law showed so little foresight in planning his days.
Often already, during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof,
when she enquired how he meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered
paradoxically: "Oh, I think for a change I'll just save it instead of
spending it--" and once, when she and May had had to go on a
long-postponed round of afternoon calls, he had confessed to having
lain all the afternoon under a rock on the beach below the house.

"Newland never seems to look ahead," Mrs. Welland once ventured to
complain to her daughter; and May answered serenely: "No; but you see
it doesn't matter, because when there's nothing particular to do he
reads a book."

"Ah, yes--like his father!" Mrs. Welland agreed, as if allowing for an
inherited oddity; and after that the question of Newland's unemployment
was tacitly dropped.

Nevertheless, as the day for the Sillerton reception approached, May
began to show a natural solicitude for his welfare, and to suggest a
tennis match at the Chiverses', or a sail on Julius Beaufort's cutter,
as a means of atoning for her temporary desertion. "I shall be back by
six, you know, dear: Papa never drives later than that--" and she was
not reassured till Archer said that he thought of hiring a run-about
and driving up the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for
her brougham. They had been looking for this horse for some time, and
the suggestion was so acceptable that May glanced at her mother as if
to say: "You see he knows how to plan out his time as well as any of
us."

The idea of the stud-farm and the brougham horse had germinated in
Archer's mind on the very day when the Emerson Sillerton invitation had
first been mentioned; but he had kept it to himself as if there were
something clandestine in the plan, and discovery might prevent its
execution. He had, however, taken the precaution to engage in advance
a runabout with a pair