Douglas, in this trouble that had arisen, felt that she could go to Nan for comfort and advice. Nan's mind was as normally active as her graceful little body was inactive and she had a faculty of seeing her way through difficulties that the conscientious but more slowly thinking Douglas much envied her. "Nan, it's fifteen minutes before train time when the week-enders will come piling in--I'm dying to have a talk with you." "Well, don't die--just talk," drawled Nan, looking up from her book but never stopping turning the crank of the mayonnaise mixer. This was a job Nan loved, making mayonnaise. She had gotten it down to a fine art since she could mix and read at the same time. She declared it was a plain waste of time to use your hands without using your head and since turning a mayonnaise mixer crank required no intelligence beyond that of seeing that the funnel was filled with olive oil, she was able to indulge in her passion for poetry while she was making the quarts of mayonnaise that the young housekeepers dealt out so generously to their week-enders. "Listen to this!" and Nan turned the crank slowly while she read: "'Alas for all high hopes and all desires! Like leaves in yellow autumn-time they fall-- Alas for prayers and psalms and love's pure fires-- One silence and one darkness ends them all!'" The crank stopped and all of the oil flowed through the funnel while Nan softly turned the leaves of Marston's "Last Harvest." "Yes, honey, it is beautiful, but you had better read a livelier form of verse or your salad dressing will go back on you." "Heavens, you are right! I've got 'Barrack Room Ballads' here ready in case I get to dawdling," laughed Nan. "I want to talk about something very important, Nan. Can you turn your crank and listen?" "Yes, indeed, but you'll have to talk fast or else I'll get to poking again. You see, I have to keep time." So Douglas rapidly repeated the conversations she had had with her mother and later with Helen. "What are we to do? Must I tell Dr. Wright? I am afraid to get them started for fear father will be mixed up in it. He must not know mother wants to go to White Sulphur--he would be sure to say let her go and then he would try to work again before he is fit for it, and he would certainly get back into the same state he was in last spring." "Poor little mumsy! I was sure she would not understand," and once more the mixer played a sad measure. "I was afraid she wouldn't," sighed Douglas, "but I did think Helen had been taught a lesson and realized the importance of our keeping within our earnings and saving something, too, for winter." "Helen--why, she is too young for the lesson she learned to stick. She is nothing but a child." "Is that so, grandmother?" laughed Douglas, amused in spite of her trouble at Nan's ancient wisdom (Nan being some two years younger than Helen).