"Oh, Jack," I admitted, "it's too perfect! Truly it makes me feel nervous!--Suppose she should roll her hoop off the cliff or----" "Or--blow out the gas!" chuckled my Husband. So you see now our cast was all assembled. Radiant, "runctious," impatient Paul Brenswick and Victoria Meredith for the Bride and Groom. George Keets for the Very Celibate Person. Ann Woltor for the Someone With a Past. Claude Kennilworth for the Someone With a Future. May Davies for the May Girl and the Singing Voice. And Rollins for the Bore. About Rollins I must now confess that I have not been perfectly frank. We hire Rollins! How else could we control him! Even with a mushroom mind like his,--fruiting only in bad weather, one can't force him on one's guests morning, noon, _and_ night! Very fortunately here, for such strategy as is necessary, my Husband concedes one further weakness than what I have previously designated as his passion for amateur theatricals and his tolerance of me. That weakness is sea shells--mollusca, you know, and that sort of thing. . . . From all over the world, smelling saltily of coral and palms, iceberg or arctic,--and only too often alas of their dead selves, these smooth-spikey-pink-blue-yellow-or-mottled shells arrive with maddening frequency. And Rollins is a born cataloguer! What easier thing in the world to say than, "Oh, by the way, Rollins, old man, here's an invoice that might interest you from a Florida Key that I've just located. . . . How about the second week in May? Could you come then, do you think? I'm all tied up to be sure with a houseful of guests that week, but they won't bother you any. And, at least, you'll have your evenings for fun. Clothes? Haven't got 'em? Oh, Pshaw! Let me see. It rained last year, didn't it? . . . Well, I guess we can raise the same umbrella that we raised for you then! S'long!" Everything settled then! Everything ready but the springtime and the scenery! . . . And God Himself at work on that!--Hist! What is it? The flash of a blue-bird? A bell tinkles! A pulley-rope creaks! And the Curtain Rises! May always comes so amazingly soon after February! So infinitely much sooner than anyone dares hope that it would! Peering into snow-smeared shop windows some rather particularly bleak morning you notice with a half-contemptuous sort of amusement a precocious display of ginghams and straw hats. And before you can turn round to tell anybody about it, tulips have happened!--And It's May! More than seeming extravagantly early this year, May dawned also with extravagant lavishness. Through every prismatic color of the world, sunshine sang to the senses! "What shall we do," fretted my Husband, "if this perfection lasts?" The question indeed was a leading one! The scenery for Rainy Week did not arrive until the afternoon of the eighth. From his frowning survey of bright lawns, gleaming surf, radiant sky, I saw my Husband turn suddenly with a little gasping sigh that might have meant anything.