“I am afraid this doesn’t interest Major Prime,” he said.

“It interests me very much,” said the Major.  “It is only another case of the fighting man’s adjustment to life after his return.  We all have to face it in one way or another.”  His eyes went out over the hills.  They were gray eyes, deep set, and, at this moment, kindly.  They could blaze, however, in stress of fighting, like bits of steel.  “We all have to face it in one way or another.  And the future of America depends largely on our seeing things straight.”

“Well, there’s only one way for Randy to face it,” said Caroline Paine, firmly, “and that is to do as his fathers did before him.”

“If I do,” Randy flared, “it will be three years before I can make a living, and I’ll be twenty-five.”

Becky put on the chaplet of leaves.  It fitted like a cap.  She might have been a dryad, escaped for a moment from the old oak.  “Three years isn’t long.”

“Suppose I should want to marry——­”

“Oh, you—­Randy——­”

“But why shouldn’t I?”

“I don’t want you to get married,” she told him; “when I come down we couldn’t have our nice times together.  You’d always be thinking about your wife.”

IV

From the porch of the Country Club, George Dalton had seen the Judge’s party at luncheon.  According to George’s lexicon no one who could afford to go to the club would eat out of a basket.  He rather blushed for Becky that she must sit there in the sight of everybody and share a feast with a shabby old Judge, a lean and lank stripling with straight hair, a lame duck of an officer, and two middle-aged women, who made spots of black and purple on the landscape.  Like Oscar, George’s ideas of life had to do largely with motor cars and yachts, and estates on Long Island, palaces at Newport and Lenox and Palm Beach.  During the war he had served rather comfortably in a becoming uniform in the Quartermaster’s Department in Washington.  Now that the war was over, he regretted the becomingness of the uniform.  He felt to-day, however, that there were compensations in his hunting pink.  He was slightly bronzed and had blue eyes.  He was extremely popular with the women of the Waterman set, but was held to be the especial property of Madge MacVeigh.

Madge had observed his interest in the party on the hill.

“George,” she said, “what are you looking at?”

“I am looking at those people who are picnicking.  They probably have ants in the salad and spiders in their coffee.”

“They are getting more out of it than you and I,” said Madge.

“How getting more?”

“We are tired of things, Georgie-Porgie.”

“Speak for yourself, Madge.”

“I am speaking for both of us.  You are tired of me, for example.”

“My dear girl, I am not.”

“You are.  And I am tired of you.  It’s not your fault, and it’s not mine.  It is the fault of any house-party.  People see too much of each other.  I am glad I am going away to-morrow, and you’ll be glad.  And when we have been separated a month, you will rush up to see me, and say you couldn’t live without me.”