But Harriet’s contribution to Rose’s difficulties, to the mounting pressure behind the dam, was destined to be more serious—­more actual, anyway—­before very long.

The question where Rose and Rodney were going to live after their lease on the McCrea house ended, had begun to press for an answer.  October first was when the lease expired and it wasn’t far from the date at which they expected the baby.  Rose wouldn’t be in any condition for house hunting during the hot summer months.  Things would have to be settled somehow before then.  A heavy calendar of important cases had kept Rodney from giving as much attention to the problem as he himself felt it needed.  He had delighted Rose with the suggestion that they go out into the country somewhere.  Not the real country of course, but up along the shore, where the train service was good and the motor a possible alternative.

They spent some very lovely afternoons during the early days of the emerging spring, cruising about looking at possible places.  They talked of building at first, but long before they could make up their minds what they wanted it had become too late for that, and they shifted to the notion of buying an old place somewhere and remodeling it.  One reason why they made no more progress was because they were looking for such different things.  Rodney wanted acres.  He’d never gardened a bit, and never would; was an altogether urban person, despite the physical energy which took him pounding off on long country walks.  But when he heard there was a tract just west of Martin Whitney’s, up at Lake Forest, that could be had at a bargain—­thirty-five thousand dollars—­he let his eye rove over it appreciatively.  And Frank Crawford and Howard West knew of advantageous sites, also, on which to expatiate with convincing enthusiasm.  The kind of house you’d have to build on that sort of place would cost you an easy thirty thousand more.

Rose didn’t even yet know much about money, to be sure, but she knew enough to be aghast at all that.  What she tried to make Rodney look for was a much more modest establishment—­a yard big enough to hold a tennis court, perhaps, and a house, well, that could be added to as they needed room.

Neither of them stuck very close to the main point on these expeditions.  They always had too good a time together—­more like a pair of children on a picnic than serious home-hunters, and they frittered a good deal of time away that they couldn’t well afford.

This was the situation when Harriet took a hand in it.  It was a situation made to order for Harriet to take a hand in.  She’d sized it up at a glance, made up her mind in three minutes what was the sensible thing for them to do, written a note to Florence McCrea in Paris, and then bided her opportunity to put her idea into effect.  She went out cruising with Rose in the car two or three times, looking at places, but gave her no indications that she felt more than the most languid interest in the problem.  She could seem less interested in a thing without being quite impolite, than any one Rose knew.