I resolved that I must wait awhile, and then if this silence lasted many evenings, I must hunt up a game of cards that takes only two.  How could I get out of the room without appearing to be in a huff or bored?  Ah! a wordless excuse; a slight noise upstairs.  Ian sometimes walks in his sleep.  I go up and sit in my window and look out through the diamond panes at the garden.  Ian stirs and mutters something about a drink.  I hasten to get it, and he, gripping the glass with his teeth, swallows eagerly, with a clicking noise in his throat.

“Is your throat sore?” I ask apprehensively.  He opens his eyes, realizes where he is, nestles his head into my neck and whispers,—­

“Not zactly lumpy sore, Barbara, just crusty, ’cause I made—­lots of dandelion curls wif my tongue to-day, and they’re—­velly—­sour,” and with a satisfied yawn he rolled back on his pillow, into the funny spread-eagle attitude peculiar to himself, but Richard slept peacefully on like a picture child, cheek on hand, and the other little dandelion-stained paw above the sheet.

(N.B.—­When one’s husband and father together take to serious whist of a moonlight night in spring, twins are not only an advantage but a necessity.)

I have searched the encyclopedia for the description of an intellectual game of cards, arranged as a duet, and found one.  It is piquet!  Now I can wait developments peacefully, for are there not also in reserve chess, checkers, backgammon, and—­jackstraws?

* * * * *

June 2.  A gentle summer shower at sunset after a perfect day has filled the world with fragrance and song, for do the birds ever sing so perfectly with such serene full-noted ecstasy as after the rains of May and June?  Or is it the clearness of the air after the rain that transmits each note in full, prisoning nothing of its value?

To-night I am unhappy.  Perhaps that is an exaggeration, and perplexed is the better word, and it is only in pages of my social experience book that the cause can be given.

Friday was Peysey Vanderveer’s eighth birthday, and it has been celebrated by a party on a scale of magnificence that to my mind would have been suitable for the only son of royalty.

Though the invitations fortunately were only given two days in advance, Richard and Ian were agog over the matter to the extent of muttering in their sleep, and getting up this morning before eight, in order, if possible, to make the hour of three come quicker, and to be sure to be ready in time.

When the invitation was brought by Mr. Vanderveer in person, he asked if Lavinia Dorman and I would not like to come up also and see the children play, adding that I need feel no responsibility about the boys, as he was going to be at home and give himself up to seeing that the “kids” had a jolly time, and got into no scrapes.