So there was to be no outside education for the youthful Seagraves; from
the nursery schoolroom no chance of escape remained. As they grew older
they became wild to go to school; stories of schoolrooms and playgrounds
and studies and teachers and jolly fellowship and vacations, brought to
them from outside by happier children, almost crazed them with the
longing for it.

It was hard for them when their little friends the Malletts were sent
abroad to school; Naïda, now aged twelve, to a convent, and Duane, who
was now fifteen, three years older than the Seagrave twins, accompanied
his mother and a tutor, later to enter some school of art in Paris and
develop whatever was in him. For like all parents, Duane's had been
terribly excited over his infantile efforts at picture-making--one of
the commonest and earliest developed of talents, but which never fails
to amaze and delight less gifted parents and which continues to
overstock the world with mediocre artists.

So it was arranged that Colonel Mallett should spend every summer abroad
with his wife to watch the incubation of Duane's Titianesque genius and
Naïda's unbelievable talent for music; and when the children came to bid
good-bye to the Seagrave twins, they seized each other with frantic
embraces, vowing lifelong fidelity. Alas! it is those who depart who
forget first; and at the end of a year, Geraldine's and Scott's letters
remained unanswered.

At the age of thirteen, after an extraordinary meeting of the directors
of the Half Moon Trust Company, it was formally decided that a series of
special tutors should now be engaged to carry on to the bitter end the
Tappan-Seagrave system of home culture; and the road to college was