War broke out in Europe with its astonishing effects and complications and when the fall came to rescue Thurley from feeling as aged as the gentleman from Calcutta who had chronic neuralgia and had occupied the veranda chair next to Miss Clergy’s, New York began to hum with winter plans and she returned to Hortense and the apartment with positive delight and eagerness. Ennui in the young is more deadly than in the middle-aged, since it is an unnatural happening. The press agent who wrote attractive squibs about Miss Precore yachting and in the mountains little dreamed that Thurley started her season with as much zest as the squirrel in the squirrel cage who, from his endless pursuit of nothing, seems to be the proof extraordinary to the world that it is possible for one person to make a quarrel! Ernestine Christian had romped over to Devonshire to meet a congenial friend who would wheel through the country and thus repay her for the yachting trip, but she was caught in the war clouds and reached home with difficulty. Caleb met her as was customary, although all she said by way of a welcome was, “I’ve had a fright of a time. Europe is seething like a witches’ caldron. I’m out of my own cigarettes and special kind of hair nets and my fingers feel like sticks. Dalrymple, the best coach I’ve ever had, has rushed to Canada to go into training!” “You look fagged,” Caleb admitted as he drove her home. “Well, as nearly as I can make out every one has a grouch on. Thurley is beginning to have bad mannerisms; Bliss must take her in hand. Lissa has ruined her with nonsensical notions and Mark dawdles about only to waste her time. You haven’t asked as to myself,” he reminded her childishly. “I brought you a hand-illumined thing,” she answered. “Oh, certainly—always remember the servants when returning home. It pays! By Jove, that’s a nice hullo for a chap, to say nothing of having stood for your glooms in Newfoundland—” “You were listening behind tall vases to get our conversation,” she reproached. “I dare say you’ve a hundred pages’ getaway on a worst-seller.” Caleb was silent and then, instead of impetuous defense, he said in a dreary tone, “Don’t believe I’ll bother you again, Ernestine. It just ‘riles’ you and discourages me.” “Oh, do drop in for dominoes; no one else ever lets me win so often,” she returned, a bundle of nerves and womanish imaginings, prepared to enter her apartment and find fault and be adorably generous all in one. Caleb was right concerning Thurley’s mannerisms. Her first adverse criticism proved a mental stab at which she recoiled with agonizing and amusing self-excuses.