Elinor was sufficiently her father’s daughter to hold her peace under her mother’s reproaches:  also, there was enough of the Grimkie blood in her veins to stiffen her in opposition when the need arose.  So she said nothing.

“Since your Uncle Ichabod made such a desperate mess of that copper business in Montana, we have all been next door to poverty, and you know it,” the mother went on, irritated by Elinor’s silence.  “I don’t care so much for myself:  your father and I began with nothing, and I can go back to nothing, if necessary.  But you can’t, and neither can Penelope; you’d both starve.  I should like to know what Brookes Ormsby has done that you can’t tolerate him.”

“It isn’t anything he has done, or failed to do,” said Elinor, wearily.  “Please let’s not go over it all again, mother.”

Mrs. Brentwood let that gun cool while she fired another.

“I suppose he came to say good-by:  what is he going to do with himself this winter?”

The temptation to equivocate for pure perversity’s sake was strong upon Elinor, and she yielded to it.

“How should I know?  He has the Amphitrite and the Florida coast, hasn’t he?”

Mrs. Brentwood groaned.

“To think of the way he squanders his money in sheer dissipation!” she exclaimed.  “Of course, he will take an entire house-party with him, as usual, and the cost of that one cruise would set you up in housekeeping.”

Penelope laughed with a younger daughter’s license.  She was a statuesque young woman with a pose, ripe lips, flashing white teeth, laughing eyes with an imp of mischief in them, and an exquisitely turned-up nose that was neither the Brentwood, which was severely classic, nor the Grimkie, which was pure Puritan renaissance.

“Which is to intimate that he won’t have money enough left to do it when he comes back,” she commented.  “I wish there were some way of making him believe he had to give me what remains of his income after he has spent all he can on the Florida cruise.  I’d wear Worth gowns and be lapped in luxury for the next ten years at the very least.”

“He isn’t going to Florida this winter,” said Elinor, repenting her of the small quibble.  “He is going West.”

Mrs. Brentwood looked up sharply.

“With us?” she queried.

“Yes.”

Penelope clasped her hands and tried to look soulful.

“Oh, Ellie!” she said; “have you——­”

“No,” Elinor retorted; “I have not.”

IV

THE FLESH-POTS OF EGYPT

The westward journey began at the appointed hour in the evening with the resourceful Ormsby in command; and when the outsetting, in which she had to sustain only the part of an obedient automaton, was a fact accomplished, Elinor settled back into the pillowed corner of her sleeping-car section to enjoy the unwonted sensation of being the one cared for instead of the caretaker.