"Oh, it isn't distressing!" said Mary. "And I got along so fast--"
She broke off to laugh; continuing then, "But that's the way I went
at it, of course. We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?"

"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her
head plaintively.

"Yes," said Mary, "I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow
afternoon, and to the theater the next night--but I stopped it there.
You see, after you give the first push, you must leave it to them
while YOU pretend to run away!"

"My dear, I don't know what to--"

"What to make of anything!" Mary finished for her. "So that's all
right! Now I'll tell you all about it. It was gorgeous and deafening
and tee-total. We could have lived a year on it. I'm not good at
figures, but I calculated that if we lived six months on poor old
Charlie and Ned and the station-wagon and the Victoria, we could
manage at least twice as long on the cost of the 'house-warming.'
I think the orchids alone would have lasted us a couple of months.
There they were, before me, but I couldn't steal 'em and sell 'em,
and so--well, so I did what I could!"

She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother.
"It seemed to be a success--what I could," she said, clasping her
hands behind her neck and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic
accompaniment to her narrative. "The girl Edith and her sister-in-
law, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were too anxious about the effect of things
on me. The father's worth a bushel of both of them, if they knew it.