I think it was just after Max proposed to me. Yes, he proposed to me again that night. He said that Jim’s illness had decided him; that any of us might take sick and die, shut in that contaminated atmosphere, and that if he did he wanted it all settled. And whether I took him or not he wanted me to remember him kindly if anything happened. I really hated to refuse him--he was in such deadly earnest. But it was quite unnecessary for him to have blamed his refusal, as he did, on Mr. Harbison. I am sure I had refused him plenty of times before I had ever heard of the man. Yes, it was just after he proposed to me that Flannigan came to the door and called Mr. Harbison out into the hall. Flannigan--like most of the people in the house--always went to Mr. Harbison when there was anything to be done. He openly adored him, and--what was more--he did what Mr. Harbison ordered without a word, while the rest of us had to get down on our knees and beg. Mr. Harbison went out, muttering something about a storm coming up, and seeing that the tent was secure. Betty Mercer went with him. She had been at his heels all evening, and called him “Tom” on every possible occasion. Indeed, she made no secret of it; she said that she was mad about him, and that she would love to live in South America, and have an Indian squaw for a lady’s maid, and sit out on the veranda in the evenings and watch the Southern Cross shooting across the sky, and eat tropical food from the quaint Indian pottery. She was not even daunted when Dal told her the Southern Cross did not shoot, and that the food was probably canned corn on tin dishes. So Betty went with him. She wore a pale yellow dinner gown, with just a sophisticated touch of black here and there, and cut modestly square in the neck. Her shoulders are scrawny. And after they were gone--not her shoulders; Mr. Harbison and she--Aunt Selina announced that the next day was Monday, that she had only a week’s supply of clothing with her, and that no policeman who ever swung a mace should wash her undergarments for her. She paused a moment, but nobody offered to do it. Anne was reading De Maupassant under cover of a table, and the rest pretended not to hear. After a pause, Aunt Selina got up heavily and went upstairs, coming down soon after with a bundle covered with a green shawl, and with a white balbriggan stocking trailing from an opening in it. She paused at the library door, surveyed the inmates, caught my unlucky eye and beckoned to me with a relentless forefinger. “We can put them to soak tonight,” she confided to me, “and tomorrow they will be quite simple to do. There is no lace to speak of”--Dal raised his eyebrows--“and very little flouncing.” Aunt Selina and I went to the laundry. It never occurred to any one that Bella should have gone; she had stepped into all my privileges--such as they were--and assumed none of my obligations. Aunt Selina and I went to the laundry.