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In the morning, their hostess asked them if they minded if she drove into Camden to get her hair washed. She was giving a cocktail party for the Mackenzies that afternoon, although it was the cook's day off. She promised to be back by noon, and when she had not returned by one, Theresa cooked lunch. At three, their hostess telephoned from Camden to say that she had just left the hairdresser's and would Theresa mind getting a head start with the canapés? Theresa made the canapés. Then she swept the sand out of the living room and picked up the wet bathing suits. Helen Jackson finally returned from Camden, and the guests began to arrive at five. It was cold and stormy. Victor shivered in his white silk suit. Most of the guests were young, and they refused cocktails and drank ginger ale, gathered around the piano, and sang. It was not the Mackenzies' idea of a good party. Helen Jackson tried unsuccessfully to draw them into the circle of hearty, if meaningless, smiles, salutations, and handshakes upon which that party, like every other, was rigged. The guests all left at half past six, and the Mackenzies and their hostess made a supper of leftover canapés. "Would you mind dreadfully taking the children to the movies?" Helen Jackson asked Victor. "I promised them they could go to the movies if they were good about the party, and they've been perfect angels, and I hate to disappoint them, and I'm dead myself."

The next morning, it was still raining. Victor could see by his wife's face that the house and the weather were a drain on her strength. Most of us are inured to the inconveniences of a summer house in a cold rain, but Theresa was not. The power that the iron bedsteads and the paper window curtains had on her spirit was out of proportion, as if these were not ugly objects in themselves but threatened to overwhelm her common sense. At breakfast, their hostess suggested that they take a drive in the rain. "I know that it's vile out," she said, "but you could drive to Camden, and it's a way of killing time, isn't it, and you go through a lot of enchanting little villages, and if you did go down to Camden, you could go to the rental library and get The Silver Chalice. They've been reserving it for days and days, and I never find the time to get it. The rental library is on Estrella Lane." The Mackenzies drove to Camden and got The Silver Chalice. When they returned, there was another chore for Victor. The battery in Helen Jackson's car was dead. He took it to the garage and got a rental battery and installed it. Then, in spite of the weather, he tried to go swimming, but the waves were high and full of gravel, and after diving once he gave up and went back to the house. When he walked into the guest room in his wet bathing trunks, Theresa raised her face and he saw that it was stained with tears. "Oh, my darling," she said, "I'm homesick."

It was, even for Victor, a difficult remark to interpret. Their only home then was a one-room apartment in the city, which, with its kitchenette and studio couch, seemed oddly youthful and transitory for these grandparents. If Theresa was homesick, it could only be for a collection of parts of houses. She must have meant something else.

"Then we'll go," he said. "We'll leave the first thing in the morning." And then, seeing how happy his words had made her, he went on. "We'll get into the car and we'll drive and we'll drive and we'll drive. We'll go to Canada."

When they told Helen Jackson, at dinner, that they were leaving in the morning, she seemed relieved. She got out a road map and marked with a pencil the best route up through the mountains to Ste. Marie and the border. The Mackenzies packed after dinner and left early in the morning. Helen came out to the driveway to say goodbye. She was wearing her wrapper and carrying a silver coffeepot. "It's been perfectly lovely to have you," she said, "even if the weather has been so vile and disagreeable and horrid, and since you've decided to go through Ste. Marie, would you mind terribly stopping