There was no other way. Labour was scarce in the village, and Nancy could get no one of the housemaids to take upon herself this daily task. Women from the outside were not allowed in the hotel laundry, and so the task fell naturally to the baby's mother. She assumed it gladly, but when the line of snowy linen was blowing free in the summer wind, and the cake of soap had been put on its special rafter, and the tubs were draining, Nancy usually went up to her bedroom, tiptoeing in because of the sleeper, and flung herself down for a heavy nap. After luncheon she gathered in her linen and watched by the wideawake baby. Then they went down to the cool shade by the creek, and Junior threw stones, and splashed fat hands in the shallows, and his mother watched him adoringly. It never entered her head that she was anything but privileged to be able to slave for him. He was always and supremely worth while. Nancy's only terrors were that something would happen to rob her of the honour. She wanted no other company; Junior was her world, except when Saturday's noon train brought Bert. She told her husband, and meant it, that she was too happy; they did not need the world. But sometimes the world intruded, and turned Nancy's hard-won philosophy to ashes. She did not want to be idle, and she did not want to be rich, but when she saw women younger than herself, in no visible way inferior, who were both, her calm was shattered for a time. One day she and Bert wheeled the boy, in his small cart, down a pleasant unfamiliar roadway, and across a rustic bridge, and, smiling over their adventure, found themselves close to a low, wide-spreading Colonial house, with striped awnings shading its wide porches, and girls and men in white grouped about a dozen tea-tables. Tennis courts were near by, and several motor-cars stood beside the pebbled drive. A gray-uniformed attendant came to them, civilly. Did they wish to see some member of the club! "Oh, it is a club then," Bert asked, a little too carelessly. "It is the Silver River Country Club, sir." "Oh, well, we'll get out of here, then," Bert said good naturedly, as he turned the perambulator on the gravel under a hundred casual eyes. He and Nancy chatted quite naturally about their mistake, as they re-crossed the rustic bridge, and went up the unfamiliar roadway again. But a cloud lay over them for the rest of that day, and that night Nancy said: "What must one have--or be--to belong to a thing like that, Bert?" "To--oh, that club?" Bert answered, "Oh, it isn't so much. A hundred initiation, and a hundred a year, I suppose." "We could do that--some year," Nancy predicted. "Well, it isn't only that. There's no use joining a country club," Bert said musingly, "unless you can do the thing decently. It means signing checks for tea, and cocktails, and keeping a car, and the Lord knows what! It means tennis rackets and golf sticks and tips and playing bridge for a stake. It all counts up!"