Wanting to dominate everything and everybody. Wanting John Washburn’s child to wear Carol’s old castoffs! As if Sherrill wasn’t every bit as good as her Carol. As if the Sherrills weren’t the finest old family anywhere around this neighborhood! And who was she to set up to snub them? She, the daughter of a corner grocery man.”

“Oh, Mother, you mustn’t put such ideas into Sherrill’s head. It will be hard enough for her anyway, if she goes—”

“If she goes!” snorted Grandmother Sherrill. “You don’t mean to say, Mary Sherrill, that you mean to let her go? Let her be a target for that selfish, pig-eyed woman to shoot at, let her be a background for that precious little flapper of a barelegged Carol! You know what Rebecca Harlow said when she got back from the shore last week. She said she didn’t wear a stocking, just sandals, all around the streets, and her bathing suit was scandalous.”

“Mother! Don’t! I haven’t said Sherrill was to go, have I? Sherrill is the one to decide. She is the one who received the invitation, and she is old enough to settle it herself. She certainly wouldn’t have to go without stockings because her younger cousin does. I’m not sure at all what Sherrill ought to do. I somehow feel that perhaps her father would have wanted her to go. After all, Weston is her uncle, and she does owe something to her father’s family.”

“And you would let her go and wear cast-off clothes and be on charity?”

“Certainly not!” said Mrs. Washburn, rising and going toward the sewing machine. “If Sherrill goes, she will be able somehow to get the right clothes to wear. We have always been decently clothed.”

“Humph!” the grandmother sneered with elderly wisdom. “I guess you’ll find out Eloise Washburn won’t care for the clothes you make. She says as much in that letter. She doesn’t want you to bring anything! She says you wouldn’t know what was suitable.”

That was the beginning of the week’s discussion.

When Keith Washburn came home and was told the news, and read the two letters, he said with a sensible, elderly brother’s farsightedness, “Well, I think she ought to go. If for nothing else than to show her aunt and cousin—yes, and uncle, too—that New York isn’t the last word in decency and culture and education. My sister can hold her own anywhere, if she wants to, and I’d like Uncle West to know it. As for Aunt Eloise and Carol, why bother about them? They’re only human beings, and can’t really do much. Sherrill needn’t have much to do with them if she finds them unpleasant. She’ll make her own place in the household, and she can surely get on with anybody for six months. I’d like her to be in New York and hear some good concerts and lectures and meet some nice people, and see the sights. It’s an education, a visit like that, even if your relatives aren’t all that you wish they were. Uncle Weston seems to be asking in good faith, why not accept in the same way, and try it out, at least? If things aren’t pleasant, you can always come home, but it is foolish to turn it down flat; and besides, I don’t think Dad would have liked it. He always thought a lot of his brother and wanted us to overlook Aunt Eloise’s snubbing for his sake. Really, Sherry, I’m glad you got this invitation. I’ve been hoping to get on my feet before long so that I might send you somewhere to get a little glimpse into another kind of life. But it doesn’t look as if I’d be able to do it for two or three more years yet, so I hope you see your way clear to take this, now that it has come, and get what you can out of it till I can do better for you.”

Sherrill gave her brother a warm look of gratitude. “You’re not to plan to do things like that for me, pard,” she said, with a caress in her voice.