“I suppose the yacht isn’t included,” Constance answered. “They’re asking seventy thousand for the house, and there’s a lot of land, you know. The Nelsons live in Detroit and it would be easy to get the details.” “You said yourself it was a beautiful place when you were there last summer,” Leila resumed, groping in her memory for the reasons with which Constance had fortified her for urging the purchase. “And the golf course up there is a wonder, and the whole place is very exclusive--only the nicest people.” “I thought you preferred the northeast coast,” her father replied. “What’s sent you back to fresh water?” “Oh, Dada, I just have to change my mind sometimes! If I kept the same idea very long it would turn bad--like an egg.” Constance, irritated by Leila’s perfunctory espousal of the proposed investment, tried to signal for silence. But Leila, having undertaken to implant in her father’s mind the desirability of acquiring the cottage at Harbor Hills, was unwilling to drop the subject. “Poor old Shep never gets any vacation to amount to anything. If we had a place in Michigan he could go up every week-end and get a breath of air. We all of us could have a perfectly grand time.” “Who’s all?” demanded her father. “You’d want to run a select boarding house, would you?” “Well, not exactly. But Connie and I could open the place early and stay late, and we’d hope you’d be with us all the time, and Shep, whenever he could get away.” “Shep, I think this is only a scheme to shake you and me for the summer. Connie and Leila are trying to put something over on us. And of course we can’t stand for any such thing.” “Of course, Father, the upkeep of such a place is considerable,” Shepherd replied conciliatingly. “Yes; quite as much as a town house, and you’d never use it more than two or three months a year. By the way, Connie, do you know those Cincinnati Marvins Leila and I met up there?” Connie knew that her father-in-law had, with characteristic deftness, disposed of the Harbor Hills house as effectually as though he had roared a refusal. Shepherd, still smarting under the rejection of his plan for giving his workmen a clubhouse, marveled at the suavity with which his father eluded proposals that did not impress him favorably. He wondered at times whether his father was not in some degree a superman who in his judgments and actions exercised a Jovian supremacy over the rest of mankind. Leila, finding herself bored by her father’s talk with Constance about the Marvins, sprang from the table, stretched herself lazily and said she guessed she would go and dress. When she reached the door she turned toward him with mischief in her eyes. “What are you up to tonight, Dada? You might stroll over and see Millie! The Claytons didn’t ask her to their party.” “Thanks for the hint, dear,” Mills replied with a tinge of irony.