When she got Florence McCrea’s answer to her letter, she took the first occasion to get Rodney off by himself and talk a little common sense into him.

“What about where to live, Rodney?” she asked.  “Made up your mind about it yet?  I suppose you know how many months there are between the first of June and the first of October.”

“We haven’t got much of anywhere,” he admitted.  “We know we want to live in the country, that’s about all.”

“Out in the country just as winter’s getting started?” she asked.  “Settling into a new place—­Rose with a new baby—­everybody else back in town;—­simply no chance of keeping servants?  Roddy, old man, you’re entitled to be a babe in the woods, of course.  Any man is who does the kind of work you do.  But it is time some one with a little common sense straightened you out about this.”

Harriet couldn’t be sure from the length of time he took seeing that his pipe was properly alight, whether he altogether liked this method of approach or not.

“Common sense always was a sort of specialty of yours, sis,” he said at last, “and straightening out.  You were always pretty good at it.”  Then, out of a cloud of his own smoke, “Fire away.”

“Well, in the first place;” she said, “remodeling is the slowest work in the world, and the fussiest.  And you can’t just tell an architect, with a wave of the hand, to go ahead.  You have to do your own fussing, which would drive you crazy.  If you had your house to-day, you’d be lucky if the paint was dry and the thing was fit to move into by the first of September.  And next September, if it’s blazing hot, won’t be exactly the time for Rose to go ramping around trying to buy furniture for a whole establishment—­because you haven’t a stick yourselves, of course—­and getting settled in, hiring servants, getting the thing going.  You can’t be sure you’ll have till the first of October.  Things like that don’t always happen exactly as they are expected to.  But suppose you have good luck and manage it.  Then where are you?  Out in the woods somewhere at the beginning of winter, just when you ought to be settled comfortably somewhere in town.

“Oh, I know it’s all very poetic, sitting in front of a roaring fire of logs, while the wind bangs the shutters, and that sort of thing, Rose singing to the baby and all.  But you’re not an Arcadian one bit.  Neither is she, really, and you’ll simply perish out there, both of you, and be back in town before the holidays.

“Rose oughtn’t to be in town this summer.  But she’ll have to be to put this through.  She ought to be down at York Harbor, or one of those Cape Cod places, instead of in this horrible smoky hole.  Because she’s not so very fit, really do you think?  Bit moody, I’d say.”

“But good lord, Harriet, we’ve got to get out of here anyway, in October.  And that means we’ve got to have some sort of place to get into.  It is an awkward time, I’ll admit.”