"What has been decided?" he asked. His voice was very gentle and uninterested.

"It's an awful pity mamma isn't in a position to help us," said Eve.

Eve was the third. After her, Arthur had been born; and then, all on a bright summer's morning, the triplets, Lee, Phyllis, and Gay.

"That old scalawag mamma married," said Lee, "spends all her money on his old hunting trips."

"Where is the princess at the moment?" asked Mr. Gilpin.

"They're in Somaliland," said Lee. "They almost took me. If they had, I shouldn't have called Oducalchi an old scalawag. You know the most dismal thing, when mamma and papa separated and she married him, was his turning out to be a regular old-fashioned brick. He can throw a fly yards further and lighter than any man I ever saw."

"And if you are bored," said Phyllis, "you say to him, 'Say something funny, Prince,' and he always can, instantly, without hesitation."

"All things considered," said Gay, "mamma's been a very lucky girl."

"Still," said Mary, "the fact remains that she's in no position to support us in the lap of luxury."

"Our kid brother," said Gay, "the future Prince Oducalchi, will need all she's got. When you realize that that child will have something like fifty acres of slate roofs to keep in order, it sets you thinking."

"One thing I insist on," said Maud, "mamma shan't be bothered by a lot of hard-luck stories—"

"Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Gilpin," said Arthur, in his gentle voice, "that my sisters are the six sandiest and most beautiful girls in the world? I've been watching them out of the corner of my eye, and wishing to heaven that I were Romney or Gainsborough. I'd give a million dollars, if I had them, for their six profiles, immortally painted in a row. But nowadays if a boy has the impulse to be a painter, he is given a camera; or if he wishes to be a musician, he is presented with a pianola. Luxury is the executioner of art. Personally I am so glad that I am going to be poor that I don't know what to do."

"Aren't you sorry for us, Artie?" asked Gay.

"Very," said he; "and I don't like to be called Artie."

*

Immediately after their father's funeral the Darlings had hurried off to their camp on New Moon Lake. An Adirondack "camp" has much in common with a Newport "cottage." The Darlings' was no exception. There was nothing camp-like about it except its situation and the rough bark slats with which the sides of its buildings were covered. There were very many buildings. There was Darling House, in which the family had their sleeping-rooms and bathrooms and dressing-rooms. There was Guide's House, where the guides, engineers, and handy men slept and cooked, and loafed in rainy weather. A passageway, roofed but open at the sides, led from Darling House to Dining House—one vast room, in the midst of which an oval table which could be extended to seat twenty was almost lost. Heads of moose, caribou, and elk (not "caught" in the Adirondacks) looked down from the walls. Another room equally large adjoined this. It contained tables covered with periodicals; two grand pianos (so that Mary and Arthur could play duets without "bumping"); many deep and easy chairs, and a fireplace so large that when it was half filled with roaring logs it looked like the gates of hell, and was so called.