Very truly yours,
SAMUEL LANGHAM.

Mary, her face flushed with the bright colors of triumph, read this letter aloud to the assembled family.

"Does anybody," she asked, "know anything about Samuel Langham? Is he a suitable person?"

"I know of him," said Arthur, smiling at some recollection or other. "He is what the newspapers call a 'well-known clubman.' He is rich, fat, good-natured, and not old. It is that part of your prospectus which touches upon the cuisine that has probably affected him. His father was a large holder of Standard Oil securities."

"As for me," said Gay, "I've seen him. Do you remember, Phyllis, being asked to a most 'normous dinner dance at the Redburns' the year we came out? At the last minute you caught cold and wanted to back out, but Mary said that wasn't done, and so I went in your place, and, as usual, nobody knew the difference. Well, Mr. Langham was there. I didn't meet him, but I remember I watched him eat. He is very smug-looking. He didn't like the champagne. I remember that. He lifted his glass hopefully, took one swallow, put his glass down, and never touched it again. His face for the rest of dinner had the expression of one who has been deeply wronged. I thought of Louis XVI mounting the scaffold."

"I do wish," said Mary, "that we knew what kind of wine the creature likes."

"Father left a splendid collection," said Arthur. "Take Mr. Langham into the cellar. He'll enjoy that. Let him pick his own bottle."

In the event, Maud sat down in her new office and wrote Mr. Langham that he and his five guests could be received earlier in the season. And then, with fear and trembling, she named a price per diem that amounted to highway robbery.

Mr. Langham's answer was prompt and cheerful. He asked merely to be notified when the ice had gone out of the lake.

"Well," said Mary, with a long-drawn sigh of relief, "the prices don't seem to have frightened him nearly as much as they frightened us. But, after all, the prospectus was alluring—though we say it that shouldn't."

Lee and Gay were troubled by qualms of conscience. The advertisements of The Camp were to appear in the February number of some of the more important periodicals, and the two scapegraces were beginning to be horribly alarmed.

Magazines have a way of being received last by those most interested in seeing them. And before even a copy of The Four Seasons reached the Darlings, there came a number of letters from people who had already seen the advertisement in it. One letter was from a very old friend of the family, and ran as follows:

MY DEAR MARY:

How could you! I have seen your advertisement of The Camp in The Four Seasons. It is earning much talk and criticism. I don't know what you could have been thinking of. I have always regarded you as one of the sanest and best-bred women I know. But it seems that you are not above sacrificing your own dignity to financial gain—