his glass and set it down still full, then grinned at me as he said, so
low that the others couldn't hear, "Will you meet me in Hayesboro after
a year and a day, Betty?"

I don't see why I didn't understand and begin to defend Sam from himself
right then instead of going carelessly and light-heartedly to Europe and
letting him manage his own affairs. I didn't even write to him, except
when I saw anything that interested or moved me, and then I just
scribbled "remind me to tell you about this" on a post-card and sent it
to him. You can seal some friends up in your heart and forget about
them, and when you take them out they are perfectly fresh and good, but
they may have changed flavor. That is what Sam did, and I am not
surprised that the rural flavor of what he offered me out there in dirt
lane shocked me slightly. I didn't think then that I liked it and I also
felt that I wished I had stayed by Sam at that wobbling period of his
career; but, on the other hand, it was plainly my duty to go to Europe
with Mabel and Peter Vandyne and Miss Greenough. The inclination to do
two things at once is a sword that slices you in two, as the man in the
Bible wanted to do to the baby to make enough of him for the two
mothers; and that is the way I felt about Peter and Sam as I whirled
along the road. I am afraid Sam is going to be the hardest to manage. He
is harder than Peter by nature. If Sam had just taken to drink instead
of farming I would have known better what to do. I reformed Peter in one
night in Naples when he took too much of that queer Italian wine merely
because it was his birthday. I used tears, and he said it should never
happen again. I don't believe it has, or he wouldn't have got an act and
a half of his "Epic of American Life" finished as he told me he had done
when I dined with him in New York the night I landed. I missed Peter
dreadfully when he left us in London in June, and so did Miss Greenough
and Mabel, though she is his sister. We all felt that if he had been
with us it wouldn't have taken us all these months of that dreadful war
to get comfortably home. Peter said at the dock that he hadn't drawn a
full breath since war had been declared until he got my feet off the
gang-plank on to American soil. He needn't have worried quite as much
as that, for we had a lovely, exciting time visiting at the Gregorys' up
in Scotland while waiting for state-rooms. And it was while hearing all
those Scotchmen and Englishm