“No epigrams are permitted.  We are here to enjoy ourselves.  I’m ordered to bring the whole crew of you to tea at the Tavish cottage.”

“Anybody else there?” asked Jack, carelessly.

“Well, it’s the most curious coincidence, but Mrs. Henderson arrived last night; Henderson has gone to Missouri.”

“Yes, he wrote me to look out for his wife on this coast,” said Mavick.

“You kept mighty still about it,” said Jack.

“So did you,” retorted Mavick.

“It is very curious,” the Major explained, “how fashionable intelligence runs along this coast, apparently independent of the telegraph; everybody knows where everybody else is.”

The Tavish cottage was a summer palace of the present fashion, but there was one good thing about it:  it had no tower, nor any make-believe balconies hung on the outside like bird-cages.  The rooms were spacious, and had big fireplaces, and ample piazzas all round, so that the sun could be courted or the wind be avoided at all hours of the day.  It was, in short, not a house for retirement and privacy, but for entertainment.  It was furnished luxuriously but gayly, and with its rugs and portieres and divans it reminded Mavick of an Oriental marquee.  Miss Tavish called it her tepee, an evolution of the aboriginal dwelling.  She liked to entertain, and she never appeared to better advantage than when her house was full, and something was going on continually-lively breakfasts and dinners, dances, theatricals, or the usual flowing in and out of callers and guests, chattering groups, and flirtatious couples.  It was her idea of repose from the winter’s gayety, and in it she sustained the role of the non-fatigueable society girl.  It is a performance that many working-girls regard with amazement.

There was quite a flutter in the cottage, as there always is when those who know each other well meet under new circumstances after a short separation.

“We are very glad to see you,” Miss Tavish said, cordially; “we have been awfully dull.”

“That is complimentary to me,” said the Major.

“You can judge the depths we have been in when even the Major couldn’t pull us out,” she retorted.  “Without him we should have simply died.”

“And it would have been the liveliest obsequies I ever attended.”

Carmen was not effusive in her greeting; she left that role to Miss Tavish, taking for herself that of confidential friend.  She was almost retiring in her manner, but she made Jack feel that she had a strong personal interest in his welfare, and she asked a hundred questions about the voyage and about town and about Edith.

“I’m going to chaperon you up here,” she said, “for Miss Tavish will lead you into all sorts of wild adventures.”

There was that in the manner of the demure little woman when she made this proposal that convinced Jack that under her care he would be perfectly safe—­from Miss Tavish.