Thus Medora Phillips continued silently, and with no exact sense of justice, to work up her grievance. Presently she surprised Randolph with a positive frown. She had made a quick, darting return to Hortense. "I shall send her away," she said aloud. The girl might join her studio friend, who had stopped at Asheville on her way North, and stay with her for a few weeks. Yes, Hortense might go and meet the spring--or even the summer, if that must be. The spring here in town she herself would take as it came. "I shall welcome a few free, easy breaths after this past fortnight," she finished audibly. Randolph squared himself with her mood as best he could. "You are tired and nervous," he said with banality. "Get the last of us out and go to bed. I'll lead the way, and will give these loiterers as marked an example as possible." Medora Phillips hushed down her house finally and went thoughtfully up stairs to her room. Amy had gone off, and Hortense was sentenced to go. There remained only Carolyn. Was there any threat in her and her sonnets? 29 _COPE AGAIN IN THE COUNTRY_ Medora treated Hortense to a few cautious soundings, decided that another locale was the thing to do her good, and sent her South forthwith. "It's a low latitude," she said to herself; "but it's a high altitude. The season is late, but she won't suffer." Hortense, who had been sullen and fractious, met her aunt half-way, and agreed passively when Medora said: "It will benefit you to see the spring come on in a new scene and in a new fashion. You will find the mountains more interesting than the dunes." So Hortense packed her things and joined her friend for a brief sojourn in sight of the Great Smokies. Thus, when Medora herself went forth to meet the spring among the sand-hills, she had only Carolyn and the other members of her domestic staff. Yet no simplest week-end without a guest or so, and she asked Cope to accompany them. "You need it," she told him bluntly; "--you need a change, however slight and brief. You are positively thin. You make me wish that thesises----" "Theses," Cope corrected her, rather spiritlessly. "----that theses, then, had never been invented. To speak familiarly, you are almost 'peakèd.'" Cope, with the first warm days, had gone back to the blue serge suit of the past autumn, and he filled it even less well than before. And his face was thin to correspond. "Besides," she went on, "we need you. It will be a kind of camping-out for a day or two--merely that. We must have your help to pitch the tent, so to speak, and to pick up firewood, and to fry the bacon.... And this time," she added, "you shall not have that long tiresome trip by train. There will be room in the car."