“I brought three parkas with me from Alaska,” she announced.

“Looks to me as if one would do it.”

Dina gave a definitely bad performance of an indulgent laugh.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Chris. He’s just a sheep in wolf’s clothing.”

“And don’t think,” Bay added, genially, “that when Lucrezia died the whole Borgia line passed out.”

Dina turned her head, already so near his own, their faces were now an inch or two apart. “You’re getting to be as catty as a woman.”

He reached up and gently took her hand from his shoulder.

“What’s going on here!” demanded a bewildered Louise.

“Here’s your coffee, Mom,” Bay said. The maid bumped her inexpert way into the room, a laden tray in her hazardous hands. “Here. I’ll take that.”

He looked about him at the burdened tables, Chris cleared a low stand and dragged it with some effort to the side of Louise’s chair. “My!” Chris said, red-faced and surprised.

Bay set the tray down. “Teakwood. Good girl! Weighs a ton.”

“Who wants coffee?” But even as she asked, Louise Husack poured herself a cup and drank half the steaming beverage without the ceremony of cream or sugar or hostess. She put down the cup and exhaled a deep breath.

Chris had learned something of the ways of the elderly in her almost twenty years of life. “Would you like me to pour it? Would you like a cup, Dina?”

“No, but I’d like a drink. I’ll stop on my way downstairs. I’m late. Coming down, Bay?”

“Nope.”

Dina had turned to leave. Now she stood a moment, arrested in the doorway. Louise Husack picked up a sandwich, she opened one of its thin flaps and peered in, cautiously. Then, with a smile of purest anticipatory pleasure she took a large semicircular oozing bite. “Coffee, Chris dear? Try one of these.” Thickly.

“No thanks. But I’d love a Coke. I’m thirsty after all those clothes.”

“It’s an act,” Dina Drake said, cryptically. She was off down the stairway.

“A Coke.” Bay Husack repeated the word paternally, almost fondly. “She wants a Coke. Come on, kid. I’ll get it for you.”

Louise called after them, “Remember you’ve got to be dressed and ready by six, your Grandpa and Mr. Husack are meeting us at the dock, and then dinner at the Olympic. You coming down with us just this once, Bayard?”

“Why not!”

Christine picked up an armload of the rejected dresses. “I’d better not bother about the Coke, thank you.”

“Here, give me those. You pick up another load. What is all this stuff, anyway?”

“They’re my clothes—they were my clothes—for the winter. And now they’re tacky.”

He looked at her over the pile of garments. “As far as I’m concerned you’re wearing a parka this minute.”

Laden, they staggered down the hall to her bedroom.

“Where do you want these?”

“Just throw them on the bed.”

“She’s all right, great friend of the family and kind of social secretary for both Mom and Dad. But you’re not taking her seriously, are you?”