"Lucien," said Silvia constrainedly, when we had arranged the details of our plan, "if you wouldn't object too much, I should like to take Diogenes with us. He hasn't missed his mother, but I really believe he'd be homesick without me."
"Take him, of course," I said. "He's manageable away from the others. I plainly see you've formed the Polydore habit, and maybe a partial parting from the Polydores would be wiser, but we'll take Diogenes as an antidote against too perfect a time. But I forgot to tell you that I had a letter from Rob today. He plans to come and make his visit now and will arrive next Monday. I'll write him to join us at Hope Haven. You must write down again for me the route we take to get there."
"It never rains but it pours. I had a letter from Beth this afternoon, and she says she would like to come to us now. She arrives Monday. Here is her letter."
"Great minds! It is quite a coincidence," I declared.
"I thought it would be so nice to have Beth go with us to this resort."
"It can't be done," I said. "That is, they can't both go. I am not going to let even Rob Rossiter slight my sister."
"Still it would be a triumph to have her change his mind--or his heart. You know a woman-hater always succumbs to the right girl."
I had been scanning Beth's letter and I laughed derisively as I read aloud: "'I am so curious to see those next-door children. When you first wrote of the "Polydores" I never once thought of them as children.'"
"She thought exactly right," I told Silvia, and then continued reading: "'I supposed them to be something like tadpoles or polliwogs. I really think I shall enjoy them.'"
"It would serve her right," I said, "to let her come and stay with them here in our absence. She'd get the cure for enjoyment all right. Rob wrote of them in the same strain and says he, too, is curious to meet the missing links."
"Does she know," asked Silvia, "how Rob regards women?"
"No; I've always made some excuse to her for not having them meet. I didn't want to hear her make disparaging remarks about him, and she is such a flirt, she'd try to draw him out and he would shut up like a clam."
"Well, I think," decided Silvia, "that the best way out of it is to write Rob to postpone his visit and I will write Beth to come direct to Hope Haven."