"Good old Arthur!" exclaimed the triplets. "We were born here, too—just nineteen years ago."

"But," objected Mr. Gilpin, "you can't run the place—you can't live here. Confound it, you young geese, you can't even pay the taxes."

Lee whispered to Gay.

"Look at Mary!"

"Why?"

"She's got a look of father in her eyes—father going down to Wall Street to raise Cain."

Mary spoke very slowly.

"Mr. Gilpin," she said, "you are an excellent estate lawyer, and I am very fond of you. But you know nothing about finance. We are going to live here whenever we please. We are going to run it wide open, as father did. We are even going to pay the taxes."

Mr. Gilpin was exasperated.

"Then you'll have to take boarders," he flung at her.

"Exactly," said Mary.

There was a short silence.

"How do you know," said Gay, "that they won't pick their teeth in public? I couldn't stand that."

"They won't be that kind," said Mary grimly. "And they will be so busy paying their bills that they won't have time."

"Seriously," said Arthur, "are you going to turn The Camp into an inn?"

"No," said Mary, "not into an inn. It has always been The Camp. We shall turn it into The Inn."

Chapter II

*

Mr. Gilpin had departed in what had perhaps been the late Mr. Darling's last extravagant purchase, a motor-boat which at rest was a streak of polished mahogany, and at full speed, a streak of foam. The reluctant lawyer carried with him instructions to collect as much cash as possible and place it to the credit of the equally reluctant Arthur Darling.

"Arthur," Mary had agreed, "is perhaps the only one of us who could be made to understand that a bank account in his name is not necessarily at his own personal disposal. Arthur is altruistically and Don Quixotically honest."

It was necessary to warm the playroom with a tremendous fire, as October had changed suddenly from autumn to winter. There was a gusty grayness in the heavens that promised flurries of snow.

Since Mary's proposal of the day before to turn the expensive camp into a profitable inn, the family had talked of little else, and a number of ways and means had already been chosen from the innumerable ones proposed. In almost every instance Arthur had found himself an amused minority. His platform had been: "Make them comfortable at a fair price."

But Mary, who knew the world, had retorted:

"We are not appealing to people who consider what they pay but to people who only consider what they get. Make them luxurious; and they will pay anything we choose to ask."

After Mr. Gilpin's chillsome departure in the Streak, the family resumed the discussion in front of the great fire in the playroom. Wow, the dog, who had been running a deer for twenty-four hours in defiance of all game-laws, was present in the flesh, but his weary spirit was in the land of dreams, as an occasional barking and bristling of his mane testified. Uncas, the chipmunk, had also demanded and received admittance to the council. For a time he had sat on Arthur's shoulder, puffing his cheeks with inconceivable rapidity, then, soporifically inclined by the warmth of the fire and the constant strain incident to his attempts to understand the ins and outs of the English language when rapidly and even slangily spoken, he dropped into Arthur's breast-pocket and went to sleep.