“May I announce myself?” Sir Charles Snow asked at the door, ajar in
the afternoon heat.
Mrs. Sên made no reply to a question that needed none, and Ruben sprang
up in welcome.
Out of harness now, Snow still was a busy man, and this was an unusual
hour for him to pay even an informal cousinly call. Mrs. Sên wondered
what had brought him and Ruben said at once, “Shall I go, Sir? You want
to see Mother alone, don’t you?”
“That was my idea,” Snow told him, “but much of what I wish to say to
her, I rather thought of saying to you afterwards. I think you’d better
stay, Ruben; three heads may prove even better than two; and the little
diplomatic matter I have come about is one which I believe you might be
able to handle better than any one else.”
“What is it, Charlie? Who wants a new roof now, or a garage built and
their rent reduced at the same time? Or have taxes gone up again?”
There was a pause; Sir Charles seemed a little unready to go on.
“Well?” Mrs. Sên prompted him gently.
“Emma has got it into her head that Ivy may be going to drift into an
engagement with Roland Curtis. We don’t want that, do we? I thought we
might put our heads together, and ease it off--if there is anything in
it. Emma has a way of hitting the nail on the head, you know.”
“Roland Curtis! That nincompoop!” Ruben blurted hotly. “Good Lord! She
mustn’t do that!”
“I never have known Ivy drift into anything in her life,” Mrs. Sên said
more quietly.
“Well--that was just my way of putting it, perhaps,” Snow said
uncomfortably.
“Ease it off!” Ruben exploded again. “We’ve jolly well got to knock it
on the head; and knock it hard. Not that I believe a word of it! Ivy
couldn’t! I tell you what we’ll do--just in case, don’t you know. You
tell Lord Whitmore what Cousin Emma thinks, Cousin Charles. Then he can
sound Ivy--she will take it from him, and I don’t know any one else she
would. If he finds that the wind blows that way at all, why then he
can tackle Ivy good and hard. If any one on earth can influence Ivy,
Whitmore can. _I’ll_ deal with the young and lovely Roland. I’ll break
his silly neck if he doesn’t listen to reason straight off when I say,
‘Go!’”
“Two very admirable suggestions, my boy,” Sir Charles told him
admiringly. “Break Roland’s neck by all means, if you can. I have no
objection, if he hasn’t. But I rather fancy any little affair of that
sort would result in his breaking _your_ neck. There is a good deal
of beef in Roland Curtis. Ever see him in regimental sports? I have.
As for my appealing to Whitmore, Ruben, that would strike me as sound
advice, if I had not already tried it out and drawn a blank.”
“What!” Ruben cried.
And Mrs. Sên looked at Sir Charles in surprise.
“Had it out with Whitmore two days ago. He didn’t see it as I do--and
as I gather Ruben cordially does too. He seemed to think that it might
be a very good thing for Ivy. He said so, in fact. Whitmore will not
meddle in it, and looking at it as he does, he ought not to.”
“Listen to me,” Mrs. Sên began. “It would be worse than useless for any
one to speak to Ivy. If she has made up her mind--and I have been a
little afraid of this for some weeks now--if she has made up her mind,
nothing will change it. And a word might push her into it.”
“That’s what Emma says,” Snow murmured.
“If the mischief is done,” Mrs. Sên went on, “it is done; and nothing
will undo it unless Ivy tires of it of her own accord before it is too
late. I don’t think she would. The reasons that had made her do it
would keep her to it.”
Neither asked what the mother thought those reasons were.
“I do not want Ivy to marry Roland,” Ruby Sên continued. “But like Lord
Whitmore, I think better of Roland than you do, Charlie--and,” with a
wan little smile, “very, very much better than you do, Rue. Can we be
sure that Ivy does not know better than we do what would work out best
for her? I am not sure. I am desperately troubled about it all, Cousin
Charles. You don’t know anything against Roland, do you?”
“No,” Snow answered promptly. “There is nothing against the
fellow--except that there is nothing to him. That’s worse!”
“What do you suggest, Sir?” Ruben said.
“Counter attraction,” Sir Charles told him. “Emma did,” he added
honestly.
“Precisely,” Mrs. Sên agreed, “that would be the only possible way--if
I were convinced that we have the right. But how? I can’t order a
counter attraction from the Stores, or engage one from Keith Prowse.
Counter attractions have to happen. And Ivy’s had them, if ever a girl
had.”
“I don’t mean a man,” Sir Charles retorted. “I was thinking of a
yacht--for one thing. What about a long cruise--pretty well around the
world; stopping at all sorts of interesting places, meeting interesting
people?”
“Mother--where are you, Mother dear?” Ivy’s voice called in the hall, a
gay girlish voice. Ruby Sên had not heard that tone in Ivy’s voice for
a long time.
There was a light patter of running, and Ivy burst into the room, a
radiant, smiling girl, a transformed Ivy; not a girl who was pretending
to be happy, as Mrs. Sên had seen so much of late, but a girl who was
happy, unaffectedly, girlishly happy.
Ruby Sên’s heart stood still. The man’s white eyebrows went up a line.
Ruben’s hand tightened on his mother’s sleeve.
They all jumped to the same conclusion.
Ivy stood a moment in the open door, looking from one to the other,
smiling at them saucily--but it was a sweet, friendly sauciness.
“How nice! All four of us. I’ve had a ripping time, Mother. I have had
such a day. Such cream-ices! Better than ours, Mother! Blanche lost her
hat overboard. And I’ve had such an escape, Mother!” Ivy giggled half
shyly.
“An escape, dear?” her mother asked her.
“You bet I have! I was going to marry the wrong man. Wouldn’t that have
been awful?”
“It would,” Snow asserted grimly.
“Perfectly awful! And I had quite made up my mind to. But I never
shall.”
The mother was watching her girl anxiously. Mrs. Sên had paled a little
as Ivy rattled on.
Ruben spoke. “Do you mean that you have refused Roland Curtis?” he
demanded.
“I have not!”
Ruben turned upon her almost roughly. “You have accepted that fool!”
“I have not!” Ivy retorted contemptuously. “_You_ ought to be a good
judge of fools, Rue; but in this instance you are a peculiarly poor
one. Roland is not a fool--and he is a perfect dear. He’s my friend,
I’d have you remember. You are not to speak of Roland like that ever
again in my hearing. I won’t have it.”
“All right,” Ruben promised good-naturedly, “I never will again--if you
aren’t going to have him. I am quite willing never to speak of him
again as long as I live. I should get over it if I never saw him again
either.”
Ivy laughed at her brother as good-naturedly as he had answered her. It
was not in Ivy Sên to hold rancor to-day.
“Keep calm, little boy,” she bade him. “I promise you that I never
shall marry Roland!” Two faces cleared at that; but the mother’s face
almost showed an added anxiety. She read more than the girl had told.
“By the way, Rue, Roland hasn’t asked me--and he never will!”
“How do you know?”
Ivy only laughed. She might have said, “Because I shall not let him.”
But Ivy Sên would not say that. She was not that type of girl.
“My, how late it is!” she exclaimed. “I must dress; so ought you,
Mother. We’ve people dining, you remember.”
They heard her laughing still as she ran down the hall--and the mother
caught a note of tears.
“Well!” Ruben turned to his mother. “What do you suppose has happened?”
“Counter attraction,” Mrs. Sên answered gravely.
“Another man!”
Mrs. Sên nodded--almost sadly.
“Was she serious?” Sir Charles asked.
“Perfectly!” Mrs. Sên told him; her voice was low and strained, and her
eyes were troubled.