siderate," Lucy dismissed him airily. "Most of my guests have trailed theirs along. And they're frightfully in the way. Come along now and I'll show you your room and you can dress for dinner. The others are playing golf over at the country club and should be back any moment."
The house the Hodges had taken was an enormous, low, two-story mansion of English stucco architecture situated upon an eminence with a velvety lawn running down to the Sound, where a dock and bathing float jutted out into the water. The rooms were all large and airy, the living room in particular of tremendous dimensions with heavily beamed ceilings and a great fireplace of native fieldstone at one end to ward off the chills of autumn and spring. The place had been artistically furnished throughout by the previous owner, Carmelita judged correctly, for Lucy had little taste in interior decoration. Or in clothes either for that matter. "I am so stupid about what is becoming. I simply pay some pirate of a modiste her fee and put my reputation in her hands," she had once explained to Carmelita. Cool-looking rattan rugs with tricky designs covered the highly polished floors sparsely and the furniture was of a wickery, summery type. And in the dining and living rooms were decanters with
