“Not going to catch the 9:40, Ned?” she asked.

“Sure pop I am!” He was sorry to be caught, and she saw it under his bluff, pleasant manner.

“You couldn’t take the 10:20 with Dad and Jim?”

“I’ve got to meet Reynolds at half-past ten, Mother,” the boy said patiently.

“Reynolds!” she frowned.  “Don’t like my fine big boy to have friends like that—­” His eyes warned her.  “Friends that aren’t as fine and dear and good as he is!” she finished, her hands on his shoulders.

“Reynolds is all right,” said Ned, bored, and looking coldly beyond her.

“And you’ll be home for dinner, Ned?”

“Sure!  Unless the Orpheum should be awfully long.  In that case we may get a bite somewhere.”

“Try to be home for dinner,” persisted the mother.  And, as if to warrant the claim on his consideration, she added:  “I paid the Cutter bill myself, dear, and Dad will pay Jordan next month.  I didn’t say anything about Cutter, but he begged me to make you feel how wrong it is to let these things run.  You have a splendid allowance, Ned,” she was almost apologetic, “and there’s no necessity of running over it, dear!”

“Sure.  I’m not going to do that again,” Ned said gruffly, uncomfortably.

“That’s right, dear!  And you will—­you’ll try to be home for dinner?”

“Sure I’ll try!” and Ned was gone, down through the roses and through the green gate.

Mrs. Toland watched him out of sight.  Then she trotted off to Hee’s domain.  Sally straggled out into the garden, with Janey and Constance and the small boy following after.  There was great distress because the little girls were all for tennis, and Keith Borroughs frankly admitted that he hated tennis.

The Tolands’ rambling mansion was built upon so sharp a hill that the garden beds were bulkheaded like terraces, and the paths were steep.  Roses—­delicious great white roses and the apricot-coloured San Rafael rose—­climbed everywhere, and hung in fragrant festoons from the low, scrub-oak trees that were scattered through the garden.  Every vista ended with the blue bay, and the green gate at the garden’s foot opened directly upon a roadway that hung like a shelf above the water.

Sally and the children gathered nasturtiums and cornflowers and ferns for the house.  The place had been woodland only a few years ago, the earth was rich with rotting leaves, and all sorts of lovely forest growths fringed the paths.  Groups of young oaks and an occasional bay or madrone tree broke up any suggestion of formal arrangement, and there were still wild columbine and mission bells in the shady places.

Presently, to the immense satisfaction of her little sisters, Sally dismissed them for tennis, and carried the music-mad small boy off to the old nursery, where he could bang away at an old piano to his heart’s content, while she pasted pictures in her camera book, in a sunny window.  Now and then she cast a look full of motherly indulgence at the little figure at the piano:  the pale, earnest little face; the tumbled black hair, the bony, big, unchildlike hands.