There's plenty of time--but keep the suggestion in the back of your head, Gerald." The boy smiled, nodded importantly, and went off to remove the stains of tennis from his person; and Eileen went, too, turning around to look back at Selwyn: "Thank you for asking Gerald! I'm sure he will love to go into anything you think safe." "Will you join us, too ?" he called back, smilingly--"we may need capital!" "I'll remember that!" she said; and, turning once more as she reached the landing: "Good-bye--until luncheon!" And touched her lips with the tips of her fingers, flinging him a gay salute.
In parting and meeting--even after the briefest of intervals--it was always the same with her; always she had for him some informal hint of the formality of parting; always some recognition of their meeting--in the light touching of hands as though the symbol of ceremony, at least, was due to him, to herself, and to the occasion.
Luncheon at Silverside was anything but a function--with the children at table and the dogs in a semicircle, and the nurses tying bibs and admonishing the restless or belligerent, and the wide French windows open, and the sea wind lifting the curtains and stirring the cluster of wild flowers in the centre of the table.
Kit-Ki's voice was gently raised at intervals; at intervals some grinning puppy, unable to longer endure the nourishing odours, lost self-control and yapped, then lowered his head, momentarily overcome with mortification.
All the children talked continuously, unlimited conversation being permitted until it led to hostilities or puppy-play.

The elders conducted such social intercourse as was possible under the conditions, but luncheon was the children's hour at Silverside.
Nina and Eileen talked garden talk--they both were quite mad about their fruit-trees and flower-beds; Selwyn, Gerald, and Boots discussed stables, golf links, and finally the new business which Selwyn hoped to develop.
Afterward, when the children had been excused, and Drina had pulled her chair close to Lansing's to listen--and after that, on the veranda, when the men sat smoking and Drina was talking French, and Nina and Eileen had gone off with baskets, trowels, and pruning-shears--Selwyn still continued in conference with Boots and Gerald; and it was plain that his concise, modest explanation of what he had accomplished in his experiments with Chaosite seriously impressed the other men.
Boots frankly admitted it: "Besides," he said, "if the Lawn people are so anxious for you to give them first say in the matter I don't see why we shouldn't have faith in it--enough, I mean, to be good to ourselves by offering to be good to you, Phil." "Wait until Austin comes down--and until I've tried one or two new ideas," said Selwyn.

"Nothing on earth would finish me quicker than to get anybody who trusted me into a worthless thing." "It's plain," observed Boots, "that although you may have been an army captain you're no captain of industry--you're not even a non-com.!" Selwyn laughed: "Do you really believe that ordinary decency is uncommon ?" "Look at Long Island," returned Boots.

"Where does the boom of worthless acreage and paper cities land investors when it explodes ?" Gerald had flushed up at the turn in the conversation; and Selwyn steered Lansing into other and safer channels until Gerald went away to find a rod.
And, as Drina had finished her French lesson, she and Lansing presently departed, brandishing fishing-rods adorned with the gaudiest of flies.
* * * * * The house and garden at Silverside seemed to be logical parts of a landscape, which included uplands, headlands, sky, and water--a silvery harmonious ensemble, where the artificial portion was neither officiously intrusive nor, on the other hand, meagre and insignificant.
The house, a long two-storied affair with white shutters and pillared veranda, was built of gray stone; the garden was walled with it--a precaution against no rougher intruder than the wind, which would have whipped unsheltered flowers and fruit-trees into ribbons.
Walks of hardened earth, to which green mould clung in patches, wound through the grounds and threaded the three little groves of oak, chestnut, and locust, in the centres of which, set in circular lawns, were the three axes of interest--the stone-edged fish-pond, the spouting fountain, and the ancient ship's figurehead--a wind-worn, sea-battered mermaid cuddling a tiny, finny sea-child between breast and lips.
Whoever the unknown wood-carver had been he had been an artist, too, and a good one; and when the big China trader, the _First Born_, went to pieces off Frigate Light, fifty years ago, this figurehead had been cast up from the sea.
Wandering into the garden, following the first path at random, Selwyn chanced upon it, and stood, pipe in his mouth, hands in his pockets, surprised and charmed.
Plunkitt, the head gardener, came along, trundling a mowing-machine.
"Ain't it kind 'er nice," he said, lingering.

"When I pass here moonlight nights, it seems like that baby was a-smilin' right up into his mamma's face, an' that there fish-tailed girl was laughin' back at him.