As for Teddie herself, she was tyrannical and melting and snappy and chummy all at the same time. She promptly ordered the servants back at their posts, and just as promptly proceeded to bully them in a manner which plainly betokened that she intended to be master of her fate in at least one quarter of an otherwise unconquered world. She ordered silver unpacked and moth-bags banished and the striped ticking off the furniture and the cars overhauled and the drapes restored and the drive-borders retrimmed and an absurd amount of cut flowers for every room in the house. But she prowled moodily about that house, resenting its quietness at the same time that she gave orders she was at home to nobody. She tried riding before breakfast, and found her old mount gone soft and her new groom grown sulky. She tried reading, and discovered how unbelievably dull all modern books could be. She tried motoring, and found no interest in maneuvering the old hair-pin curves on two wheels and no thrill in defying the old speed-traps at sixty miles an hour. Even the greenhouses, when she invaded them, seemed to suggest funeral set-pieces and the vanity of all earthly ways. The very walls about that lordly Hayden demense grew still again remarkably suggestive of jail walls. And that particular wall which intervened between her own and the adjacent West estate seemed to take on a particularly objectionable coloring. As for her Uncle Chandler, he punctiliously dressed for dinner, and punctiliously sat at one end of the big dining-room table while Teddie just as solemnly sat at the other—though she did once emerge sufficiently from her self-absorption to remark that they looked exactly like two palm-trees on the edge of the Sahara. She also once ventured to ask if Watkins really oughtn’t to have a passport when he carried the joint all the way from her end of the table down to the old Major’s end of the table. And her Uncle Chandler brightened up sufficiently to inquire if he hadn’t better order a taxi to run them out to the terrace for coffee, so abysmally vast seemed the distances in that dolorous and empty house. If the old Major remained suspiciously meek and long-suffering during these days of trial, it must be acknowledged that he made divers and undivulged trips in to the City, whence he returned oddly fortified in spirit and beguilingly abstracted in manner. The only excursion which brought him obvious displeasure was that when he brought back to Teddie a motor-truck loaded down with her studio possessions—which the lady in question solemnly committed to a bonfire on the rear end of the East Drive. And that afternoon as they sat taking tea and cinnamon-toast on the Terrace, he finally found the courage to confront the morose-eyed young lady who sat in the high-backed willow-chair so moodily tearing an Ophelia rose to pieces. “Say, Teddie, isn’t it about time you were loosening up?” the old Major quietly inquired.