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Was there no other possible solution, no new way of ordering their lives? No there was none: he could not picture Susy out of her setting of luxury and leisure, could not picture either of them living such a life as the Nat Fulmers, for instance! He remembered the shabby untidy bungalow in New Hampshire, the slatternly servants, uneatable food and ubiquitous children.
But surely you won't let Ursula Gillow dictate to you?... There's my jade pendant; the one you said you liked the other day.... The Fulmers won't go with me, you understand, unless they're satisfied about the children; the whole plan will fall through. Susy darling, you were always too unselfish; I hate to see you sacrificed to Ursula." Susy's smile lingered.
There were only five Fulmers; but at times they were like an army with banners, and their power of self-multiplication was equalled only by the manner in which they could dwindle, vanish, grow mute, and become as it were a single tumbled brown head bent over a book in some corner of the house in which nobody would ever have thought of hunting for them and which, of course, were it the bonne's room in the attic, or the subterranean closet where the trunks were kept, had been singled out by them for that very reason.
But there was Nat, the second in age, whose motor-horn had driven her and Nick out to the hill-side on their fatal day at the Fulmers' and there were the twins, Jack and Peggy, of whom she had kept memories almost equally disquieting.
She drew back and gave him one of her straight strong glances: "No," she said gallantly, "but just to love." IN the persistent drizzle of a Paris winter morning Susy Lansing walked back alone from the school at which she had just deposited the four eldest Fulmers to the little house in Passy where, for the last two months, she had been living with them.
"And, you know, it will end by interesting you I'm sure it will," the mother concluded, her irrepressible hopefulness rising even to this height, while Susy stood before her with a hesitating smile. Take care of five Fulmers for three months! The prospect cowed her. If there had been only Junie and Geordie, the oldest and youngest of the band, she might have felt less hesitation.
And then it was unsettling to be with her in such a house as the Fulmers', away from the large setting of luxury they were both used to, in the cramped cottage where their host had his studio in the verandah, their hostess practiced her violin in the dining-room, and five ubiquitous children sprawled and shouted and blew trumpets and put tadpoles in the water-jugs, and the mid-day dinner was two hours late-and proportionately bad because the Italian cook was posing for Fulmer.
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