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"There's no reason why you should go at all, my dear," his wife answered with a cheerfulness that had become automatic "I have some cards to leave at the other end of Bellevue Avenue, and I'll drop in at about half-past three and stay long enough to lanced hesitatingly at her daughter "And if Newland's afternoon is provided for perhaps May can drive you out with the ponies, and try their new russet harness"

It was a principle in the Welland family that people's days and hours should be what Mrs Welland called "provided for" Theto "kill time" (especially for those who did not care for whist or solitaire) was a vision that haunted her as the spectre of the unemployed haunts the philanthropist Another of her principles was that parents should never (at least visibly) interfere with the plans of theirthis respect for May's independence with the exigency of Mr Welland's claienuity which left not a second of Mrs Welland's own time unprovided for

"Of course I'll drive with Papa--I' to do," May said, in a tone that gently reminded her husband of his lack of response It was a cause of constant distress to Mrs Welland that her son-in-laed so little foresight in planning his days Often already, during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof, when she enquired how he meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered paradoxically: "Oh, I think for a change I'll just save it instead of spending it--" and once, when she and May had had to go on a long-postponed round of afternoon calls, he had confessed to having lain all the afternoon under a rock on the beach below the house

"Newland never seems to look ahead," Mrs Welland once ventured to cohter; and May answered serenely: "No; but you see it doesn'tparticular to do he reads a book"

"Ah, yes--like his father!" Mrs Welland agreed, as if allowing for an inherited oddity; and after that the question of Newland's unemployment was tacitly dropped

Nevertheless, as the day for the Sillerton reception approached, May began to show a natural solicitude for his welfare, and to suggest a tennis match at the Chiverses', or a sail on Julius Beaufort's cutter, as afor her temporary desertion "I shall be back by six, you know, dear: Papa never drives later than that--" and she was not reassured till Archer said that he thought of hiring a run-about and driving up the island to a stud-farha for this horse for solanced at her mother as if to say: "You see he kno to plan out his time as well as any of us"