"Melgrove!" the conductor howls, sleepily. "Melgrove! Melgrove!"




V

The Crowe house was both small and inconveniently situated--it was twenty
full minutes walk from the station and though a little box of a garage had
been one of the "all modern conveniences" so fervidly painted in the real
estate agent's advertisement, the Crowes had no car. It was the last house
on Undercliff Road that had any pretense to sparse grass and a stubbly
hedge--beyond it were sand-dunes, delusively ornamented by the signs
of streets that as yet only existed in the brain of the owner of the
"development," and, a quarter of a mile away, the long blue streak of the
Sound.

Oliver's key clicked in the lock--this was fortunately one of the times
when four-year-old Jane Ellen, who went about after sunset in a continual,
piteous fear of "black men wif masks," had omitted to put the chain on the
door before being carried mutinously to bed. Oliver switched on the hall
light and picked up a letter and a folded note from the card tray.

"Ted, Ollie and Dickie will share that little bijou, the sleeping porch,
unless Ted prefers the third-story bathtub," the note read. "Breakfast at
convenience for those that can get it themselves--otherwise at nine. And
DON'T wake Dickie up.

MOTHER."