Ordinarily Mary, too, would have been at Beach Meadow with the children, seeing George only in the rare intervals when he could run up from town, two or three times a season perhaps, and really rather more glad than otherwise to have Mamma with her.  But this promised to be a trying and overworked summer for him, and Mary herself was tired from a winter of close attention to her nursery, and to them both the plan seemed a most tempting chance for jolly little dinners together, Sunday and evening trips in the motor, roof-garden shows and suppers.  They had had too little of each other’s undivided society in the three crowded years that had witnessed the arrival of the twins and baby Mary, there had been infantile illnesses, Mary’s own health had been poor, Mamma had been with them, nurses had been with them, doctors had been constantly coming and going, nothing had been normal.  Both Mary and George had thought and spoken a hundred times of that one first, happy year of their marriage, and they wanted to bring back some of its old free charm now.  So the children, with Miss Fox, who was a “treasure” of a trained nurse, and Myra, whose Irish devotion was maternal in its intensity, were sent away to the seaside, and they were living on the beach all day, and sleeping in the warm sea air all night, and hardier and browner and happier every time they rushed screaming out to welcome mother and daddy and the motor-car for a brief visit.  And Mamma was with Cousin Will.  Or at least she had been—­

Well, there was only one thing certain, Mary decided,—­Mamma could not come to them.  That would spoil all the summer they had been planning so happily.  To picnic in the hot city with one beloved companion is one thing, to keep house there for one’s family is quite another.  Mamma was not adaptable, she had her own very definite ideas.  She hated a dimly lighted drawing-room, and interrupted Mary’s music—­to which George listened in such utter content—­with cheery random remarks, and the slapping of cards at Patience.  Mamma hated silences, she hated town in summer, she made jolly and informal little expeditions the most discussed and tedious of events.  If George, settling himself happily in some restaurant, suggested enthusiastically a planked steak, Mamma quite positively wanted some chicken or just a chop for herself, please.  If George suggested red wine, Mamma was longing for just a sip of Pommerey:  “You order it, Georgie, and let it be my treat!”

It never was her treat, but that was the least of it.

No, Mamma simply couldn’t come to them now.  She would have to go to Miss Fox and the children.  Myra wouldn’t like it, and Mamma always interfered with Miss Fox, and would have to take the second best bedroom, and George would probably make a fuss, but there was nothing else to do.  It couldn’t be helped.