The affair had gone on in spite of the sidelong looks of restless dislike with which Dryfoos regarded it; but now when Beaton did not come to Saratoga it necessarily dropped, and Christine’s content with it.  She bore the trial as long as she could; she used pride and resentment against it; but at last she could not bear it, and with Mela’s help she wrote a letter, bantering Beaton on his stay in New York, and playfully boasting of Saratoga.  It seemed to them both that it was a very bright letter, and would be sure to bring him; they would have had no scruple about sending it but for the doubt they had whether they had got some of the words right.  Mela offered to bet Christine anything she dared that they were right, and she said, Send it anyway; it was no difference if they were wrong.  But Christine could not endure to think of that laugh of Beaton’s, and there remained only Mrs. Mandel as authority on the spelling.  Christine dreaded her authority on other points, but Mela said she knew she would not interfere, and she undertook to get round her.  Mrs. Mandel pronounced the spelling bad, and the taste worse; she forbade them to send the letter; and Mela failed to get round her, though she threatened, if Mrs. Mandel would not tell her how to spell the wrong words, that she would send the letter as it was; then Mrs. Mandel said that if Mr. Beaton appeared in Saratoga she would instantly take them both home.  When Mela reported this result, Christine accused her of having mismanaged the whole business; she quarrelled with her, and they called each other names.  Christine declared that she would not stay in Saratoga, and that if Mrs. Mandel did not go back to New York with her she should go alone.  They returned the first week in September; but by that time Beaton had gone to see his people in Syracuse.

Conrad Dryfoos remained at home with his mother after his father went West.  He had already taken such a vacation as he had been willing to allow himself, and had spent it on a charity farm near the city, where the fathers with whom he worked among the poor on the East Side in the winter had sent some of their wards for the summer.  It was not possible to keep his recreation a secret at the office, and Fulkerson found a pleasure in figuring the jolly time Brother Conrad must have teaching farm work among those paupers and potential reprobates.  He invented details of his experience among them, and March could not always help joining in the laugh at Conrad’s humorless helplessness under Fulkerson’s burlesque denunciation of a summer outing spent in such dissipation.