For a while the hurry and bustle and secret family conferences mildly interested them.  Very soon, however, the talk of psychic waves and millions bored them; and as soon as the villa at Oyster Bay was opened they were glad enough to go.

Here, at Oyster Bay, there was some chance of escaping their money-mad and wave-intoxicated family; they could entertain and be entertained by both of the younger sets in that dignified summer resort; they could wander about their own vast estate alone; they could play tennis, sail, swim, ride, and drive their tandem.

But best of all—­for they were rather seriously inclined at the age of eighteen, or, rather, on the verge of nineteen—­they adored sketching, in water colors, out of doors.

Scrubby forelands set with cedars, shadow-flecked paths under the scrub oak, meadows where water glimmered, white sails off Center Island and Cooper’s Bluff—­Cooper’s Bluff from the north, northeast, east, southeast, south—­this they painted with never-tiring, Pecksniffian patience, boxing the compass around it as enthusiastically as that immortal architect circumnavigated Salisbury Cathedral.

And one delicious morning in early June, when the dew sparkled on the poison ivy and the air was vibrant with the soft monotone of mosquitoes and the public road exhaled a delicate aroma of crude oil, Drusilla and Flavilla, laden with sketching-blocks, color-boxes, camp-stools, white umbrellas and bonbons, descended to the great hall, on sketching bent.

Mr. Carr also stood there, just outside on the porch, red, explosive, determined legs planted wide apart, defying several courtly reporters, who for a month had patiently and politely appeared every hour to learn whether Mr. Carr had anything to say about the new invention, rumors of which were flying thick about Park Row.

“No, I haven’t!” he shouted in his mellow and sonorously musical bellow.  “I have told you one hundred times that when I have anything to say I’ll send for you.  Now, permit me to inform you, for the hundred and first consecutive time, that I have nothing to say—­which won’t prevent you from coming back in an hour and standing in exactly the same ridiculous position you now occupy, and asking me exactly the same unmannerly questions, and taking the same impertinent snapshots at my house and my person!”

He executed a ferocious facial contortion, clapped the monocle into his left eye, and squinted fiercely.

“I’m getting tired of this!” he continued.  “When I wake in the morning and look out of my window there are always anywhere from one to twenty reporters decorating my lawn!  That young man over there is the worst and most persistent offender!”—­scowling at a good-looking youth in white flannels, who immediately blushed distressingly.  “Yes, you are, young man!  I’m amazed that you have the decency to blush!  Your insolent sheet, the Evening Star, refers to my Trust Company as a Green Mouse Trap and a Mouseleum.  It also publishes preposterous pictures of myself and family.  Dammit, sir, they even produce a photograph of Orlando, the family cat!  You did it, I am told.  Did you?”