, saying
then: "Well, anyhow, she didn't _know_ he'd go away! She was a sport,
all right!"

"Oh yes, indeed," said Mrs. Marshall, dipping and steaming, and wiping
away the perspiration, which ran down in drops to the end of her
large, shapely nose. "Yes, my grandmother was a sport, all right." The
acrid smell of hot, cooking tomatoes filled the shed and spread to the
edge where Sylvia and her aunt stood, still a little aloof. Although
it bore no resemblance to the odor of violets, it could not be called
a disgusting smell: it was the sort of smell which is quite agreeable
when one is very hungry. But Sylvia was not hungry at all. She stepped
back involuntarily. Mrs. Marshall-Smith, on the contrary, advanced a
step or so, until she stood close to her sister-in-law. "Barbara, I'd
like to see you a few minutes without the children," she remarked in
the neutral tone she always had for her brother's wife. "A rather
unpleasant occurrence--I'm in something of a quandary."

Mrs. Marshall nodded. "All right," she agreed. "Scatter out of here,
you children! Go and let out the hens, and give them some water!"

Arnold needed no second bidding, reminded by his stepmother's words
of his experiences of the morning. He and Judith scampered away in
a suddenly improvised race to see who would reach the chicken-house
first. Sylvia went more slowly, looking back once or twice at the
picture made by the two women, so dramatically contrasted--her mother,
active, very upright, wrapped in a crumpled and stained apron, her
dark hair bound closely about her round head, her moist, red face and
steady eyes turned attentively upon the radiant creature beside her,
cool and detached, leaning willow-like on the slender wand of the
gold-colored parasol.

Professor Marshall chanced to be late that day in coming home for
luncheon, and Aunt Victoria and Arnold had returned to the hotel
without seeing him. His wife remarked that Victoria had asked her
to tell him something, but, acting on her inviolable principle that
nothing must interfere with the cheerful peace of mealtime, said
nothing more to him until after they had finished the big plate of
purple grapes from her garden, with which the meal ended.

Then Judith vanished out to the shop, where she was constructing a
rabbit-house for the latest family. Sylvia took Lawrence, yawning and
rubbing his eyes, but fighting desperately against his sleepiness,
upstairs for his nap. When this task fell to