In this way, almost from the first, several distinct lines of cleavage were established in the family party during the next fortnight.  Arnold imperiously demanded a complete vacation from “lessons,” and when, it was indolently granted, he spent it incessantly with Judith, the two being always out of doors and usually joyously concocting what in any but the easy-going, rustic plainness of the Marshall mode of life would have been called mischief.  Mrs. Marshall, aided by the others in turn, toiled vigorously between the long rows of vegetables and a little open shack near by, where, on a superannuated but still serviceable cook-stove, she “put up,” for winter use, an endless supply of the golden abundance which, Ceres-like, she poured out every year from the Horn of Plenty of her garden.  Sylvia, in a state of hypnotized enchantment, dogged her Aunt Victoria’s graceful footsteps and still more graceful, leisurely halts; Lawrence bustled about on his own mysterious business in a solitary and apparently exciting world of his own which was anywhere but in La Chance; and Professor Marshall, in the intervals of committee work at the University, now about to open, alternated between helping his wife, playing a great deal of very noisy and very brilliant music on the piano, and conversing in an unpleasant voice with his sister.

Mr. Rollins, for whom, naturally, Arnold’s revolt meant unwonted freedom, was for the most part invisible, “seeing the sights of La Chance, I suppose,” conjectured Aunt Victoria indifferently, in her deliciously modulated voice, when asked what had become of the sandy-haired tutor.  And because, in the intense retirement and rustication of this period, Mrs. Marshall-Smith needed little attention paid to her toilets, Pauline also was apparently enjoying an unusual vacation.  A short time after making the conjecture about her stepson’s tutor, Aunt Victoria had added the suggestion, level-browed, and serene as always, “Perhaps he and Pauline are seeing the sights together.”

Sylvia, curled on a little stool at her aunt’s feet, turned an artless, inquiring face up to her.  “What are the ‘sights’ of La Chance, Auntie?” she asked.

Her father, who was sitting at the piano, his long fingers raised as though about to play, whirled about and cut in quickly with an unintelligible answer, “Your Aunt Victoria refers to non-existent phenomena, my dear, in order to bring home to us the uncouth provinciality in which we live.”

Aunt Victoria, leaning back, exquisitely passive, in one of the big, shabby arm-chairs, raised a protesting hand.  “My dear Elliott, you don’t do your chosen abiding-place justice.  There is the new Court-House.  Nobody can deny that that is a sight.  I spent a long time the other day contemplating it.  That and the Masonic Building are a pair of sights.  I conceive Rollins, who professes to be interested in architecture, as constantly vibrating between the two.”