"Well, we certainly got things off in great style, eh?" Charles beside her in the cab, the bags stowed at their feet, had his erect, briskly managing air. "Everything done, and time for dinner before your train." Catherine was sunk in a lethargy of weariness; dimly she still sorted, packed, gave directions. "You know, I forgot about the gas deposit." She emerged frantically from her lethargy. "Five dollars!" "I'll see to it. Where's the receipt?" "Let's see--in that envelope. I'll mail it to you. It was good of mother to take the children until train time, wasn't it?" Catherine sighed. "I tell you, it was a lucky thing we got the apartment off our hands before fall." Charles patted her knee cheerfully. "Awful job, if we'd had to pack up at the end of the summer." "Awful job any time!" "Oh, well, a week in Maine will make you forget it all. Especially with the rent off our chests." "You'll surely come in three weeks?" "Positively. That finishes up everything. And I'll have to get away then if I'm to have any vacation. Say, be sure to tell old Baker he's got to take me down to the ledges for some real fishing. I haven't fished for two years, except for flounders." "And Buxton the first of August?" "Be hot there in August, won't it? Well, I'll have to go then. But I can find a house for us, and sort of learn the ropes before you blow in." "I wonder----" Catherine's brows met in a deep wrinkle. "I can't remember which trunk I put the blankets in, and the linen. Hope they aren't labeled Buxton!" "Oh, you got them where they belong. Don't fuss, I tell you. You let me drop you at the Gilberts' now, and I'll go on to the station. I can check these things, and that will give you a few minutes to rest." "I don't care where you drop me." Catherine laughed. "All my poor mind does is to hunt for things in those trunks and boxes." "You might as well stop worrying. They're settled." * * * * * Catherine stood at the entrance to the hotel, watching the taxi jerk its way along with the traffic. Charles's hand lay on the opened window, a resolute, capable fist. Every one was going home. Home from work. Shop girls in gay tweeds, already faded across the shoulders; sallow, small men in baggy trousers, with bits of lint sticking to them, from the lofts where they sewed--perhaps on more gay tweed suits, or beaded silk dresses for the trade. Moist, pale faces, with a startled, worn expression, as if the warmth of the day surprised and exhausted the city dwellers. And in Maine--a sharp visual image of pointed firs reflected in clear water, with a luminous twilight sky behind dark branches. "Ought to be glad I'm going," she thought. "Instead of spending the summer here, with these people. And the children--I couldn't keep them here. Could I!"