nd
is a nut."

With an almost cosmic sorrow in his manner and an irritated twist in his
suspenders, the chauffeur disappeared into the garage. Father forlornly
felt that he wasn't visibly getting nearer to the heart and patronage of
Mrs. Vance Carter.

He stood alone on the cement terrace before the garage. The square grim
back of the big house didn't so much "look down on him" as beautifully
ignore him. A maid in a cap peeped wonderingly at him from a window. A
man in dun livery wheeled a vacuum cleaner out of an unexpected basement
door. An under-gardener, appearing at the corner, dragging a cultivator,
stared at him. Far off, somewhere, he heard a voice crying, "Fif' love!"
He could see a corner of a sunken garden with stiff borders of box. He
had an uneasy feeling that a whole army of unexpected servants stood
between him and Mrs. Vance Carter; that, at any moment, a fat,
side-whiskered, expensive butler, like the butlers you see in the
movies, would pop up and order him off the grounds.

The unsatisfactory chauffeur reappeared. In a panic Father urged, "Say,
my name's Appleby and I run the tea-room at Grimsby Head--you know,
couple of miles this side of the Center. It would be pretty nice for our
class of business if the Madam was to stop there some time, and I was
just wondering, just kinda wondering, if some time when she felt thirsty
you c--"

"She don't never tell me when she's thirsty. She just tells me when
she's mad."

"Well, you know, some time you might be stopping to show her the view or
something--you fix it up, and-- Here, you get yourself some cigars." He
timidly held out a two-dollar bill. It seemed to bore the chauffeur a
good deal, but he condescended to take it. Father tried to look knowing
and friendly and sophisticated all at once. He added, "Any time you feel
like a good cup o' tea and the finest home-made doughnuts you ever ate,
why, you just drop in yourself, and 'twon't cost you a cent."

"All right, 'bo, I'll see what I can do," said the chauffeur, and
vanished again.

Father airily stamped along the driveway. His head was high and
hopeful. He inspected the tennis-courts as though he were Maurice
McLoughlin. He admitted that the rhododendrons were quite extensive. In
fact, he liked Grimsby Hill.

He had saved their fortunes--not for himself, but for Mother. He
whistled "The Harum-Scarum Rag" all the way home, interrupting himself
only to murmur: "I wonder where the back door of th