“I wish you would tell me how to get Charlie to study some. I can’t get him to do anything but play and make love to the girls.” Bunny wanted to say, “Try cutting off his allowance,” but he realized that that would be one of those “horrid” things for which Bertie was always rebuking him. So he said, “It’s quite a problem”—in the style of a diplomat or politician. “The young people are too much of a problem for me,” said Charlie’s mother. “They want to race about all day, and they just insist on dragging you with them, and it’s getting to be more than I can stand.” So then Bunny was sorry for Charlie’s mother—he had supposed that she did all this “gadding” because she enjoyed it. To look at her, she was a nautical maid, plump but shapely, clad in spotless white and blue, with fluffy brown hair that the breeze was always blowing into her bright blue eyes. Bunny stole a glance now and then, and judged that the surgical operations upon her face must have been successes, for he saw no trace of them. “I’ve devoted my whole life to that boy,” the nautical maid was saying, “and he doesn’t appreciate it a bit. The more you do for people the more they take it as a matter of course. This afternoon I think I’ll go on strike! Will you back me up?” So when the golfing expedition was setting out, Charlie announced, in a tone loud enough for the whole company, “Mumsie’s not going—she’s got a crush on Bunny!” At which they all laughed merrily, and trooped down the ladder, secretly relieved to be rid of one of the old folks, who insisted on “tagging along,” and trying to pretend to be one of the crowd, when it was perfectly evident that they were not and could not. IX So Bunny and Mrs. Norman sat on the deck of the “Siren,” in two big canvas chairs under a striped canvas awning, and sipped fruit juices and chatted about many things. She wanted to know about his life, and his family; Bunny, having heard something about the ways of “mumsies,” guessed that she was investigating Bertie as a possible daughter-in-law, so he mentioned all the nice things he could. Assuming that she would not be entirely indifferent to practical matters, he told about the Ross tract, how he and Dad had discovered it, and how the wells continued to flow. And Mrs. Norman said, “Oh, money, money, always money! We all of us have too much, and don’t know how to buy happiness with it!” She went on to reveal that she was Theosophist, and how there was a great mahatma coming, and we were all going to learn to live on a different astral plane. She had noticed that Bunny, when he stood against a dark background at night, had a very decided golden aura—had anyone ever mentioned it to him? It meant that he had a spiritual nature, and was destined for higher things.