"No, my dear, but you can help him greatly in it," Miss Jencks instructed placidly (she was invaluable, was Barbara, when it was a matter of proper platitude, which flowed from her lips with the ease of water from a tap--and she believed it, too!) "a man needs a woman in his home. Her influence--" "Yes, I know, you have told me that before. But you could stay with Roger, Miss Jencks, and be that influence," said Margarita sweetly, "and I could go with Jerry." Was she impish, or only ingenuous, I wonder? One could never tell. "How about the baby?" Roger demanded cheerfully. "I am not going to nurse it any more," said the mother of little Mary quietly. "Madame said I had better stop it now--it will be better for my voice. So it will not need me. Dolledge knows all about taking care of it." "But, my dear, are you sure it will be good for Mary not to nurse her? She is not six months old, you know," Miss Jencks suggested mildly. Margarita leaned her round chin into the cup of her hands and gazed thoughtfully at her mentor. "Then why do you not nurse her, dear Miss Jencks?" she asked. At this Roger and I left the room hastily. I am unable to state what the late directress of the Governor-General's family said or did! It was the next day, I remember, that I was called to New York on business connected with my mother's small affairs, and while there I was greatly surprised and not a little amused to receive a telegram from Roger asking me to engage passage for himself, Margarita, Miss Jencks, Dolledge and the baby, on my own boat, if possible, if not, to change my sailing to fit theirs. It is only fair to say that Sears, Bradley and Sears had recently become involved in a complicated lawsuit of international interests and importance, and Roger took some pains to inform me of the very handsome retaining-fee which his knowledge of the workings of English law combined with his proficiency in French quite justified him in accepting in consideration of his giving the greater part of his time to this case--a case almost certain to drag through the winter and require his presence in London and his constant correspondence with Paris. I received this information as gravely as he offered it, but, to use his own phrase, I reserved my decision as to whether the lack of that same international case would have kept the Bradley menage in New York. * * * * * I stayed in Paris long enough to see Margarita and wee Mary, with their respective guardians, installed comfortably and charmingly in the _Rue Marboeuf_, bade Roger god-speed across the Channel (I could tell from the set of his shoulders how he would plunge into the work there and how well-earned would be his flying trips Parisward!) and then struck south into Italy, bent on a private errand of my own.