Sally looked up with a flash of protest in her eyes.  “Let you furnish it!” she exclaimed.  “Oh, but I couldn’t—­I know what your furnishing it would mean.  Persian rugs and silk hangings, Satsuma jars and cut-glass bowls filled with roses.  And on the other side of the hall our poor things would look”—­she stopped short, and was silent for an instant.  Then, “I’m an envious pig,” she owned.  “If you’ll only come you may furnish it in teak wood and Chinese embroidery, and I’ll be contented on my—­bare floors.”

But Josephine’s affectionate arm was around her friend’s shoulders.  “Sally Lunn,” said she, soothingly, “give us credit for better taste than that, entirely from the standpoint of harmony.  In a summer home on a farm people of sense don’t use Persian rugs or teak wood.  We’d put plain white straw matting on the floors, hang muslin curtains at the windows, and use the simplest willow furniture to be had.  The windows should be open every minute, and there would be bowls of roses about—­only I’d rather it would be sweet-williams or clove-pinks.  Sally, don’t you adore the old-fashioned clove-pinks, with their dear, spicy smell?  And the bowls themselves wouldn’t be cut glass—­I despise cut glass for old-fashioned flowers, and so do you.  Now, will you let us come?”

Sally looked at her friend for a minute, thinking as she did so that for a rich girl Josephine Burnside possessed the sweetest common sense ever owned by anybody.  Then she dropped her rake and pulled at Josephine’s hand.

“Come!” she cried.  “Let’s go back and look at the west wing.  And the bedrooms over it are the nicest in the house.  I haven’t used them only because they were so big.  But you won’t care how many acres of straw matting have to be used to cover them.”

“Do you think Max will be willing for us to come?” Josephine asked with some anxiety, as they went in.  “You remember, about the tent—­”

“Oh, he’s anxious now to get Jarvis on the ground.  And he’s spoken more than once about the desirability of our renting some of our unused space, only of course I wouldn’t hear of it, before, to strangers.”

Josephine plunged into details.  They would bring Joanna for the season, that paragon of cooks.  She should assist Mary Ann—­

At which Sally laughed, and said that if incompetent little Mary Ann could assist dignified, competent Joanna, it would be a matter for congratulation.

“We’ll all dine together every night in the big dining-room, with all the windows also open, and more flowers on the table.”

Josephine would have gone on to further details, but as they crossed the hall to the west wing, the knocker on the front door banged with a decisive sound, and Sally opened to find Donald Ferry on the threshold.