man.

With breathless secrecy Father planned to entice Mrs. Vance Carter to
"The T Room." Once they had her there, she would certainly appreciate
the wholesome goodness of Mother's cooking. He imagined long intimate
conversations in which Mrs. Carter would say to him, "Mr. Appleby, I
can't tell you how much I like to get away from my French cook and enjoy
your nice old house and Mrs. Appleby's delicious homey doughnuts." It
was easy to win Mrs. Carter, in imagination. Sitting by himself in the
rose-arbor while Mother served their infrequent customers or stood at
the door unhappily watching for them, Father visualized Mrs. Carter
exclaiming over the view from the arbor, the sunset across the moors as
seen from their door--which was, Father believed, absolutely the largest
and finest sunset in the world. He even went so far as to discover in
Mrs. Vance Carter, Mrs. Cabot-Winslow-Carter, a sneaking fondness for
cribbage, which, in her exalted social position, she had had to conceal.
He saw her send the chauffeur away, and cache her lorgnette, and roll up
her sleeves, and simply wade into an orgy of cribbage, with pleasing
light refreshments of cider and cakes waiting by the fireplace. Then he
saw Mrs. Carter sending all her acquaintances to "The T Room," and the
establishment so prosperous that Miss Mitchin would come around and beg
the Applebys to enter into partnership.

Father was not such a fool as to believe all his fancies. But hadn't he
heard the most surprising tales of how friendly these great folk could
be? Why here just the other day he had been reading in the boiler-plate
innards of the _Grimsby Recorder_ how Jim Hill, the railroad king, had
dropped off at a little station in North Dakota one night, incog., and
talked for hours to the young station-master.

He was burning to do something besides helping Mother in the
kitchen--something which would save them and pull the tea-room out of
the hole. Without a word to Mother he started for Grimsby Hill, the
estate of Mrs. Vance Carter. He didn't know what he was going to do, but
he was certain that he was going to do something.

As he arrived at the long line of iron picket fence surrounding Grimsby
Hill, he saw Mrs. Carter's motor enter the gate. It seemed to be a good
omen. He hurried to the gate, peered in, then passed on. He couldn't go
and swagger past that exclusive-looking gate-house and intrude on that
sweep of rhododendron-lined private driveway. He walk