Mrs. Burnside shook her head, smiling. "I'll make my first trip into the country when the chains are not needed, son. Give Sally my love, and tell her that now spring is at hand I shall come out with you often." "Let me tell her you'll come out and spend the whole season there. Furnish the west side of the house, take Joanna, share expenses--and chaperon her." "Whom--Joanna?" Josephine Burnside, sheathing herself in veils for the drive in the chilly early April air, glanced at her brother with a mischievous air. "She's forty, if she's a day. Surely she doesn't need--" "I wish you people would take me seriously. Could you find a pleasanter place to spend the summer? I expect to spend every daylight hour of every day there, from the fifteenth of April on." "Then it's you who need the chaperon," declared Josephine. "Uncle Timothy Rudd is dragon enough for Sally." "I shall want to be out there for every noon meal. Can't break off work and rush home three times a day, even with the new car--and she'll make it in twenty minutes, when the roads are good. I shall have to take my lunch in a pail, like my farm hands, if you don't come, for I'm not going to cast myself on the Lanes for food, except now and then." "Come on, I'm ready. Talk to me about it on the way out, and when I come back I'll put it to mother so artfully she can't refuse." And Josephine took the control of the door-knob out of her brother's hand. Jarvis applied himself silently to his steering-wheel until they were out of the city, for although after a month's practice he drove with considerable skill, he had not yet reached the point where steering through city traffic becomes purely mechanical. But once on the open road, with few vehicles in the way, Jarvis continued the subject. "Do you think mother really dislikes the idea? It seems to me the most practical in the world. Those west rooms would be fine, furnished with summer stuff--I wouldn't for the world have you put anything in them that would make the other part of the house look shabby by contrast." "Jarvis! As if we would! Why, it would be just mattings and wicker chairs, muslin curtains, and that sort of thing. And I think mother rather likes the idea. But she is afraid we should be forcing ourselves on them, as we did last summer with the tent. She doesn't doubt they would all like it, except Max. But he's so queer--he never likes what he's expected to." "Max is the very one who would favour it this time. He said the other day he wished I could live out here, since I'm to run everything this season. I said I'd like mighty well to be on the ground, but couldn't, of course, in the circumstances, unless the family were along. He said, 'Set up for yourselves in the west wing, and be here to get up with the lark, in the approved farmer's style. I propose to sleep till the last minute, and let the early birds get all the worms they like.'" "Oh, he was only joking."