“We’d need some outing clothes, of course.  I’ve been thinking that a couple of plain khaki suits—­you know—­and these leggings that lace down the side, would be all we’d really need.  I wish you’d go out home with me instead of going to a show.  Fred will be home, and he can explain the details of this thing better than I can.  If it were a difficult stanza of Browning, now—­but I haven’t much talent for business.  And seriously, Marion, you must know all about this before you really say yes or no.  And it’s time you had some real object in life—­time you settled down to regard your life seriously.  I love you just the way you are, dear, but for your own sake you must learn to think for yourself and not act so much upon impulse.  I couldn’t bear to go off without you, and stay a whole year, maybe—­but if you should go, not knowing just what it was going to be like, and then be disappointed—­you see, dear, you might come to blaming poor Kate.”

“Why, I wouldn’t do anything of the kind!  Even if it did turn out to be something I didn’t care for, it would be so much better than staying here with you gone, that I don’t see how I could mind very much.  You know, Kate, I’m just crazy about the country.  I’d like to sleep right outside!  And I think a log cabin is the dearest way to live—­don’t you?  And we’d hike, wouldn’t we?—­up to the lake and all around.  I’ve got enough money to buy a gun, and if there’s any hunting around there, we’ll hunt!  Kate, down in my heart I’m sick of massaging old ladies’ double chins and kidding them into thinking they look young!  And anyway,” she added straightforwardly, “I don’t suppose I’ll be at the Martha much longer.  They’re going to let a lot of us girls out, and I’m almost sure to be one of them.  There’s enough of the older girls to do all the work there is now, till the tourist season begins again in the fall.  I couldn’t get in anywhere else, this time of the year, so I’d just about have to go out to one of the beaches and get a little tent house or something with some of the girls, and fool around until something opened up in the fall.  And even if you live in your bathing suit all day, Kate, you just can’t get by without spending a little money.”

“Well, of course, you’d stay with me if I were here.  I wouldn’t hear to anything else.  And even—­why don’t you come on out anyway, till we get ready to start?  We could plan so much better.  And don’t you think, Marion, it would be much better for you if you didn’t wait for the Martha to let you go but gave them notice instead?”

“Quit before I’m invited to leave?  I believe I’d better do that, Kate.  It won’t be half bad to spring it on the girls that I’m going up in the mountains for the summer.  I’ll talk about that lake till—­say, I’m just wild to start.  How soon do you think it will be?  Fred will have to teach me how to trout-fish—­or whatever you call it.  Only think of stepping out of our log cabin and catching trout, just any time you want to!  And, Kate, I really am going to buy a gun.  Down on Spring, in that sporting-goods house—­you know, the one on the corner—­they have got the cutest rifles!  And by the way, they had some of the best looking outing suits in the window the other day.  I’m going in there when I come down in the morning.”