Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/250

 peach and copper glories were ripe fruit against an old brick wall, the tinkle echoed from an old piano in a dim, green-shuttered parlor, and the soft snoring of the General, asleep on the silk motor coat, was the drowsy breathing of a contented little fellow in knickerbockers dreaming in a window seat.

"Did you ever go to Atlantic City?"

The lady's voice woke them as a gong wakes a sleeper. "Now that's my idea of the country!"

He stared at her vaguely.

"But—but that's no place for children," he protested. He had hardly grown up at that moment, himself.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"It's not exactly necessary to have six children, you know," she said, "and then you needn't be worried over a place for them, and can afford to think a little about the place you'd like for yourself."

The sun was in her eyes and she missed the look in his as he jumped up from the astonished group and seized her wrist.

"Christine, you simply shan't talk that way!"