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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43977 ***
+
+THE SEVEN DARLINGS
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: She stood stock-still, in plain view if they had looked
+her way]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+SEVEN DARLINGS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+BY GOUVERNEUR MORRIS
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+With Frontispiece
+By HOWARD CHANDLER CHRISTY
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A. L. BURT COMPANY
+Publishers
+New York
+Published by Arrangements with CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
+CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
+
+
+
+
+TO
+HOPE DAVIS
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVEN DARLINGS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Six of the Darlings were girls. The seventh was a young man who looked
+like Galahad and took exquisite photographs. Their father had died
+within the month, and Mr. Gilpin, the lawyer, had just faced them, in
+family assembled, with the lamentable fact that they, who had been so
+very, very rich, were now astonishingly poor.
+
+"My dears," he said, "your poor father made a dreadful botch of his
+affairs. I cannot understand how some men----"
+
+"Please!" said Mary, who was the oldest. "It can't be any satisfaction
+to know why we are poor. Tell us just how poor we are, and we'll make
+the best of it. I understand that The Camp isn't involved in the general
+wreck."
+
+"It isn't," said Mr. Gilpin, "but you will have to sell it, or at least,
+rent it. Outside The Camp, when all the estate debts are paid, there
+will be thirty or forty thousand dollars to be divided among you."
+
+"In other words--_nothing_," said Mary; "I have known my father to spend
+more in a month."
+
+"Income--" began Mr. Gilpin.
+
+"_Dear_ Mr. Gilpin," said Gay, who was the youngest by twenty minutes;
+"don't."
+
+"Forty thousand dollars," said Mary, "at four per cent is sixteen
+hundred. Sixteen hundred divided by seven is how much?"
+
+"Nothing," said Gay promptly. And all the family laughed, except Arthur,
+who was trying to balance a quill pen on his thumb.
+
+"I might," said Mr. Gilpin helplessly, "be able to get you five per cent
+or even five and a half."
+
+"You forget," said Maud, the second in age, and by some thought the
+first in beauty, "that we are father's children. Do you think _he_ ever
+troubled his head about five and a half per cent, or even," she finished
+mischievously, "six?"
+
+Arthur, having succeeded in balancing the quill for a few moments, laid
+it down and entered the discussion.
+
+"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.
+
+Pantry House and Bar House led from Dining House to Smoke House, where
+an olive-faced chef, all in white, was surrounded by burnished copper
+and a wonderful collection of blue and white.
+
+There was Work House with its bench, forge, and lathe for working wood
+and iron; Power House adjoining; and on the slopes of the mountain back
+of the camp, Spring House, from which water, ice-cold, at high pressure
+descended to circulate in the elaborate plumbing of the camp.
+
+For guests, there were little houses apart--Rest House, two
+sleeping-rooms, a bath and a sitting-room; Lone House, in which one
+person could sleep, keep clean, write letters, or bask on a tiny balcony
+thrust out between the stems of two pine-trees and overhanging deep
+water; Bachelor House, to accommodate six of that questionable species.
+And placed here and there among pines that had escaped the attacks of
+nature and the greed of man were half a dozen other diminutive houses,
+accommodating from two to four persons.
+
+The Camp was laid out like a little village. It had its streets, paved
+with pine-needles, its street lamps.
+
+It had grown from simple beginnings with the Darling fortune; with the
+passing of this, it remained, in all its vast and intricate elaboration,
+like a white elephant upon the family's hands. From time to time they
+had tried the effect of giving the place a name, but had always come
+back to "The Camp." As such it was known the length and breadth of the
+North Woods. It was _The_ Camp, par excellence, in a region devoted to
+camps and camping.
+
+"Other people," the late Mr. Darling once remarked, "have more land, but
+nobody else has quite as much camp."
+
+The property itself consisted of a long, narrow peninsula thrust far out
+into New Moon Lake, with half a mountain rising from its base. With the
+exception of a small village at the outlet of the lake, all the
+remaining lands belonged to the State, and since the State had no
+immediate use for them and since the average two weeks' campers could
+not get at them without much portage and expense, they were regarded by
+the Darlings as their own private preserves.
+
+"The Camp," said Mr. Gilpin, "is, of course, a big asset. It is unique,
+and it is celebrated, at least among the people who might have the means
+to purchase it and open it. You could ask, and in time, I think, get a
+very large price."
+
+They were gathered in the playroom. Mary, very tall and beautiful, was
+standing with her back to the fireplace.
+
+"Mr. Gilpin," she said, "I have been coming to The Camp off and on for
+twenty-eight years. I will never consent to its being sold."
+
+"Nor I," said Maud. "Though I've only been coming for twenty-six."
+
+"In twenty-four years," said Eve, "I have formed an attachment to the
+place which nothing can break."
+
+"Arthur," appealed Mr. Gilpin, "perhaps you have some sense."
+
+"I?" said Arthur. "Why? Twenty-two years ago I was born here."
+
+"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."
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+Arthur sighed. He was feeling immensely fidgety; but he knew that any
+sudden, irritable shifting of position would disturb the slumbers of
+Uncas, and so for nearly an hour he held himself heroically, almost
+uncannily, still.
+
+Two years ago, dating from his graduation, Arthur had had a change of
+heart. He had been so dissipated as to give his family cause for the
+utmost anxiety. He had squandered money with both hands. He had had a
+regular time for lighting a cigarette, namely, when the one which he had
+been smoking was ready to be thrown away. He had been a keen hunter and
+fisherman. His chief use for domestic animals was to tease them and play
+tricks upon them. Then suddenly, out of this murky sky, had shone the
+clear light of all his subsequent behavior. He neither drank nor smoked;
+he neither slaughtered deer nor caught fish. He was never quarrelsome.
+He went much into the woods to photograph and observe. He became almost
+too quiet and self-effacing for a young man. He asked nothing of the
+world--not even to be let alone. He was patient under the fiendish
+ministrations of bores. He tamed birds and animals, spoiling them, as
+grandparents spoil grandchildren, until they gave him no peace, and were
+always running to him at inconvenient times because they were hungry,
+because they were sleepy, because they thought somebody had been
+abusing them, or because they wished to be tickled and amused.
+
+"He's like a peaceful lake," Maud had once said, "deep in the woods,
+where the wind never blows," and Eve had nodded and said: "True. And
+there's a woman at the bottom of it."
+
+The sisters all believed that Arthur's change of heart could be traced
+to a woman. They differed only as to the kind.
+
+"One of our kind," Mary thought, "who wouldn't have him."
+
+"One of our kind," thought Maud, "who couldn't have him."
+
+And the triplets thought differently every day. All except Gay, who
+happened to know.
+
+"But," said Maud, "if we are to appeal to people of our own class, all
+mamma's and papa's old friends and our own will come to us, and that
+will be much, too much, like charity."
+
+"Right," said Mary. "Don't tell _me_ I haven't thought of that. I have.
+Applications from old friends will be politely refused."
+
+"We can say," said Eve, "that we are very sorry, but every room is
+taken."
+
+"But suppose they aren't?" objected Arthur.
+
+Eve retorted sharply.
+
+"What is that to do with it? We are running a business, not a Bible
+class."
+
+But Phyllis was pulling a long face.
+
+"Aren't we ever to see any of our old friends any more?"
+
+Lee and Gay nudged each other and began to tease her.
+
+"Dearest Pill," they said, "all will yet be well. There is more than one
+Geoffrey Plantagenet in the world. You shall have the pick of all the
+handsome strangers."
+
+"Oh, come, now!" said Arthur, "Phyllis is right. Now and then we must
+have guests--who don't pay."
+
+"Not until we can afford them," said Mary. "Has anybody seen the
+sketch-map that papa made of the buildings?"
+
+"I know where it is," said Arthur, "but I can't get it now; because Wow
+needs my feet for a pillow and at the moment Uncas is very sound
+asleep."
+
+"Can't you _tell_ us where it is?"
+
+"Certainly," he said; "it's in the safe. The safe is locked."
+
+"And where is the key?"
+
+"Just under Uncas."
+
+"Very well, then," said Mary, "important business must wait until
+Stripes wakes up. Meanwhile, I think we ought to make up our minds how
+and how much to advertise."
+
+"There are papers," said Eve, "that all wealthy Americans always see,
+and then there's that English paper with all the wonderful
+advertisements of country places for sale or to let. I vote for a
+full-page ad in that. People will say, 'Jove, this must be a wonderful
+proposition if it pays 'em to advertise it in an English paper.'"
+
+Everybody agreed with Eve except Arthur. He merely smiled with and at
+her.
+
+"We can say," said Eve, "shooting and fishing over a hundred thousand
+acres. Does the State own as much as that, Arthur?"
+
+He nodded, knowing the futility of arguing with the feminine conscience.
+
+"Two hundred thousand?"
+
+He nodded again.
+
+"Then," said Eve, "make a note of this, somebody." Maud went to the
+writing-table. "Shooting and fishing over hundreds of thousands of
+acres."
+
+"There must be pictures," said Maud, "in the text of the ad--the place
+is full of them; and if they won't do, Arthur can take others--when Wow
+and Uncas wake up."
+
+"There must be that picture after the opening of the season," said Mary,
+"the year the party got nine bucks--somebody make a point of finding
+that picture."
+
+"There are some good strings of trout and bass photographically
+preserved," said Gay.
+
+"A picture of chef in his kitchen will appeal," said Lee.
+
+"So will interiors," said Maud. "Bedrooms with vistas of plumbing. Let's
+be honestly grateful to papa for all the money he spent on porcelain and
+silver plate."
+
+"Oh, come," said Mary, "we must advertise in the American papers, too. I
+think we should spend a good many thousand dollars. And of course we
+must do away with the big table in the dining-house and substitute
+little tables. I propose that we ransack the place for photographs, and
+that Maud try her hand at composing full-page ads. And, Arthur, please
+don't forget the sketch plan of the buildings--we'll have to make quite
+a lot of alterations."
+
+"I've thought of something," said Maud. "Just a line. Part of the ad, of
+course, mentions prices. Now I think if we say prices from so and so
+up--it looks cheap and commonplace. At the bottom of the ad, then, after
+we've described all the domestic comforts of The Camp and its sporting
+opportunities, let's see if we can't catch the _clientèle_ we are after
+with this:
+
+  "'PRICES RATHER HIGH.'"
+
+"Maud," said Mary, after swift thought, "your mind is as clear as a gem.
+Just think how that line would have appealed to papa if he'd been
+looking into summer or winter resorts. Make a note of it-- What are you
+two whispering about?"
+
+Lee and Gay looked up guiltily. They had not only been whispering but
+giggling. They said: "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
+
+But presently they put on sweaters and rowed off in a guide boat, so
+that they might converse without fear of being observed.
+
+"Sure you've got it?" asked Lee.
+
+"Umm," said Gay, "sure."
+
+They giggled.
+
+"And you think we're not just plain conceited?"
+
+"My dear Lee," said Gay, "Mary, Maud, and Eve are famous for their faces
+and their figgers--have been for years, poor old things. Well, in my
+candid opinion, you and Phyllis are better-looking in every way. I look
+at you two from the cool standpoint of a stranger, and I tell you that
+you are incomparably good-looking."
+
+Lee laughed with mischievous delight.
+
+"And you look so exactly like us," she said, "that strangers can't tell
+us apart."
+
+"For myself," said Gay demurely, "I claim nothing. Absolutely nothing.
+But you and Pill are certainly as beautiful as you are young."
+
+"For the sake of argument, then," said Lee, "let's admit that we six
+sisters considered as a collection are somewhat alluring to the eye.
+Well--when the mail goes with the ads Maud is making up, we'll go with
+it, and make such changes in the choice of photographs as we see fit."
+
+"That won't do," said Gay. "There will be proofs to correct."
+
+"Then we'll wait till the proofs are corrected and sent off."
+
+"Yes. That will be the way. It would be a pity for the whole scheme to
+fall through for lack of brains. I suppose the others would never
+agree?"
+
+"The girls _might_," said Lee, "but Arthur never. He would rise up like
+a lion. You know, deep down in his heart he's a frightful stickler for
+the proprieties."
+
+"We shall get ourselves into trouble."
+
+"It will not be the first or the last time. And besides, we can escape
+to the woods if necessary, like Bessie Belle and Mary Grey."
+
+"Who were they?"
+
+  "'They were two bonnie lassies.
+  They built a house on yon burn brae
+  And thecht it o'er wi' rashes.'"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+If we except Arthur, whose knowledge of the Adirondack woods and waters
+was that of a naturalist, Lee and Gay were the sportsmen of the family.
+They had begun to learn the arts of fishing and hunting from excellent
+masters at the tender age of five. They knew the deeps and shallows of
+every lake and brook within many miles as intimately as a good housewife
+knows the shelves in her linen closet. They talked in terms of blazes,
+snags, spring holes, and runways. Each owned a guide boat, incomparably
+light, which she could swing to her shoulders and carry for a quarter of
+a mile without blowing. If Lee was the better shot, Gay could throw the
+more seductive fly.
+
+There had been a guide in the girls' extreme youth, a Frenchman, Pierre
+Amadis de Troissac, who had perhaps begun life as a gentleman. Whatever
+his history, he had taught the precious pair the rudiments of French and
+the higher mysteries of fishing.
+
+He had made a special study of spring holes, an essential in Adirondack
+trout-fishing, and whenever the Darlings wanted trout, it had only been
+necessary to tell De Troissac how many they wanted and to wait a few
+hours. On those occasions when he went fishing for the larder, Lee and
+Gay, two little roly-polies with round, innocent eyes, often accompanied
+him. It never occurred to De Troissac that the children could mark down
+the exact places from which he took fish, and, one by one and quite
+unintentionally, he revealed to them the hard-won secrets of his spring
+holes. The knowledge, however, went no further. They would have told
+Phyllis, of course, if she had been a sport. But she wasn't. She
+resembled Lee and Gay almost exactly in all other ways; but the spirit
+of pursuit and capture was left out of her. Twice she had upset a boat
+because a newly landed bass had suddenly begun to flop in the bottom of
+it, and once, coming accidentally upon a guide in the act of
+disembowelling a deer, she had gone into hysterics. She could row, carry
+a boat, swim, and find the more travelled trails; but, as Lee and Gay
+said: "Pill would starve in the woods directly the season was over."
+
+She couldn't discharge even a twenty-two calibre rifle without shutting
+her eyes; she couldn't throw a fly twenty feet without snarling her
+leader. The more peaceful arts of out-of-doors had excited her
+imagination and latent skill.
+
+In the heart of the woods, back of The Camp, not to be seen or even
+suspected until you came suddenly upon it, she had an acre of gardens
+under exquisite cultivation, and not a little glass. She specialized in
+nectarines, white muscats of Alexandria, new peas, and heaven-blue
+larkspur. But, for the sake of others, she grew to perfection beets,
+sweet corn, the lilies in variety, and immense Japanese iris.
+
+As The Camp was to be turned into an inn which should serve its guests
+with delicious food, Phyllis and her garden became of immense importance
+and she began to sit much apart, marking seed catalogues with one end of
+a pencil and drumming on her beautiful teeth with the other.
+
+Negotiations had been undertaken with a number of periodicals devoted to
+outdoor life, and a hundred schemes for advertising had been boiled down
+to one, which even Arthur was willing to let stand. To embody Mary's
+ideas of a profitable proposition into a page of advertising without
+being too absurd or too "cheap," had proved extremely difficult.
+
+"We will run The Inn," she said, "so that rich people will live very
+much as they would if they were doing the running. One big price must
+cover all the luxuries of home. We must eliminate all extras--everything
+which is a nuisance or a trouble. Except for the trifling fact that we
+receive pay for it, we must treat them exactly as papa used to treat his
+guests. He gave his guests splendid food of his own ordering. When they
+wanted cigars or cigarettes, they helped themselves. There was always
+champagne for dinner, but if men preferred whiskey and soda, they told
+the butler, and he saw that they got it. What I'm driving at is this:
+There must be no difference in price for a guest who drinks champagne
+and one who doesn't drink anything. And more important still, we must do
+all the laundering without extra charge; guides, guide boats, guns, and
+fishing-tackle must be on tap--just as papa had everything for his
+guests. The one big price must include absolutely everything."
+
+Added to this general idea, it was further conveyed in the final
+advertisement that the shooting was over hundreds of thousands of acres
+and the fishing in countless lakes and streams. And the last line of
+the ad, as had been previously agreed, was this:
+
+  "PRICES RATHER HIGH."
+
+And, as Gay said to Lee: "If that doesn't fetch 'em--you and I know
+something that maybe will."
+
+The full-page ad began and ended with a portrait of Uncas, the chipmunk,
+front view, sitting up, his cheeks puffed to the bursting point. The
+centre of the page was occupied by a rather large view of The Camp and
+many of the charming little buildings which composed it, taken from the
+lake. Throughout the text were scattered reproductions--strings of
+trout, a black bear, nine deer hanging in a row, and other seductions to
+an out-of-door life. For lovers of good food there was a tiny portrait
+of the chef and adjoining it a photograph of the largest bunch of white
+muscats that had ever matured in Phyllis's vinery.
+
+A few days before the final proofs began to come in from the advertising
+managers, there arrived, addressed to Gay, a package from a firm in New
+York which makes a specialty of developing and printing photographs for
+amateurs. Gay concealed the package, but Lee had noted its existence,
+and sighed with relief. A little later she found occasion to take Gay
+aside.
+
+"Was the old film all right? Did they print well?"
+
+Gay nodded. "It always was a wonderful picture," she said.
+
+"Us for the tall timber," she said--"when they come out."
+
+The final proofs being corrected and enveloped, Gay and Lee, innocent
+and bored of face, announced that, as there was nothing to do, they
+thought they would row the mail down to the village. It was a seven-mile
+row, but that was nothing out of the ordinary for them and it was
+arranged that the _Streak_ should be sent after them in case they showed
+signs of being late for lunch.
+
+Gay rowed with leisurely strokes, while Lee, seated in the stern, busied
+herself with a pair of scissors and a pot of paste. She was giving the
+finally corrected proofs that still more final correcting which she and
+Gay had agreed to be necessary.
+
+They had decided that the centrepiece of the advertisement--a mere
+general view of The Camp--though very charming in its way, "meant
+nothing," and they had made up their unhallowed minds to substitute in
+its place one of those "fortunate snap-shots," the film of which Gay
+had--happened to preserve.
+
+In this photograph the six Darling sisters were seated in a row, on the
+edge of The Camp float. Their feet and ankles were immersed. They wore
+black bathing-dresses, exactly alike, and the bathing-dresses were of
+rather thin material--and very, very wet.
+
+The six exquisite heads perched on the six exquisite figures proved a
+picture which, as Lee and Gay admitted, might cause even a worthy young
+man to leave home and mother.
+
+It was not until they were half-way home that Lee suddenly cried aloud
+and hid her face in her hands.
+
+"For Heaven's sake," exclaimed Gay, "trim boat, and what's the matter
+anyway?"
+
+"Matter?" exclaimed Lee; "that picture of us sits right on top of the
+line _Prices Rather High_. And it's too late to do anything about it!"
+
+Gay turned white and then red, and then she burst out laughing. "'Tis
+awful," she said, "but it will certainly fetch 'em."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The Camp itself underwent numerous changes during the winter; and even
+the strong-hearted Mary was appalled by the amount of money which it had
+been found necessary to expend. The playroom would, of course, be
+reserved for the use of guests, and a similar though smaller and
+inferior room had been thrust out from the west face of Darling House
+for the use of the family. Then Maud, who had volunteered to take charge
+of all correspondence and accounts, had insisted that an office be built
+for her near the dock. This was mostly shelves, a big fireplace, and a
+table. Here guests would register upon arrival; here the incoming mail
+would be sorted and the outgoing weighed and stamped. It had also been
+found necessary, in view of the very large prospective wash, to enlarge
+and renovate Laundry House and provide sleeping quarters for a couple of
+extra laundresses.
+
+Those who are familiar with the scarcity and reluctance of labor in the
+Adirondacks will best understand how these trifling matters bit into the
+Darling capital.
+
+Sometimes Mary, who held herself responsible for the possible failure of
+the projected inn, could not sleep at night. Suppose that the
+advertising, which would cost thousands of dollars, should fall flat?
+Suppose that not a single solitary person should even nibble at the high
+prices? The Darlings might even find themselves dreadfully in debt. The
+Camp would have to go. She suffered from nightmares, which are bad, and
+from daymares, which are worse. Then one day, brought across the ice
+from the village of Carrytown at the lower end of the lake, she received
+the following letter:
+
+  MISS DARLING,
+  The Camp, New Moon Lake in the Adirondacks, New York.
+
+     DEAR MADAM:--Yesterday morning, quite by accident, I saw the
+     prospectus of your inn on the desk of Mr. Burns, the advertising
+     manager of _The Four Seasons_. I note with regret that you are not
+     opening until the first of July. Would it not be possible for you
+     to receive myself and a party of guests very much earlier, say just
+     when the ice has gone out of the lake and the trout are in the warm
+     shallows along the shores? Personally, it is my plan to stay on
+     with you for the balance of the season, provided, of course, that
+     all your accommodations have not been previously taken.
+
+      With regard to prices, I note only that they are "rather high." I
+      would suggest that, as it would probably inconvenience you to
+      receive guests prior to the date set for the formal opening of
+      your camp, you name a rate for three early weeks which would be
+      profitable to you. There will be six men in my party, including
+      myself.
+
+  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----
+
+"Well, in the name of all that's ridiculous," exclaimed Mary; "of all
+that's impertinent!--will somebody kindly tell me what my personality
+has to do with our prospectus of The Camp?"
+
+Those who could have told her held their tongues and quaked inwardly.
+The others joined in Mary's surprise and indignation. Even Arthur, who
+hated the whole innkeeping scheme, was roused out of his ordinary
+placidity.
+
+"I shall write to the horrid old woman," said Mary, "and tell her to
+mind her own business. I shall also tell her that we are receiving so
+many applications for accommodations that we don't know how to choose.
+That isn't quite true, of course; but we have received some. Since I am
+not above sacrificing my dignity"--she went on angrily--"to financial
+gain, I may as well throw a few lies into the bargain."
+
+The next day, addressed to "The Camp," came the long-expected number of
+_The Four Seasons_. Arthur opened it and began to turn the leaves.
+Presently, from the centre of a page, he saw his six beautiful sisters
+looking him in the face.
+
+"Mary!" he called, in such a voice that she came running. She looked and
+turned white. Eve came, and Maud and Phyllis.
+
+"Who is responsible for this--" cried Arthur, "for this sickening--this
+degraded piece of mischief?"
+
+"You corrected the final proofs yourself," said Maud.
+
+"And sealed them up. If I find that some mischief-maker in the office of
+_The Four Seasons_ has been playing tricks----"
+
+"The mischief-makers are to be found nearer home," said Mary. "Don't you
+remember that Lee and Gay took the proofs to the post-office. They said
+they were bored and could think of nothing to do. _This_ is what they
+were thinking of doing!"
+
+"Where are they?" he said in a grim voice.
+
+"Now, Arthur," said Maud, "think before you say anything to them that
+you may regret. As for the picture of us in our bathing-suits--well, I,
+for one, don't see anything dreadful about it. In fact, I think we look
+rather lovely."
+
+Arthur groaned.
+
+"I want to talk to Lee and Gay," he said. "My sisters--an advertisement
+in a magazine--for drummers and newsboys to make jokes about----"
+
+He grew white and whiter, until his innocent sisters were thoroughly
+frightened. Then he started out of the playroom in search of Lee and
+Gay.
+
+In or about The Camp they were not to be found. Nobody had seen them
+since breakfast. With this information, he returned to the playroom.
+
+"They've run away," he said, "and I'm going after them."
+
+"I wouldn't," said Mary. "The harm's been done. You can't very well
+spank them. I wish you could. You can only scold--and what earthly good
+will that do them, or you?"
+
+"I don't know that anything I may say," said Arthur, "_will_ do them any
+good. I live in hopes."
+
+"Have you any idea where they've gone?"
+
+"I'll cast about in a big circle and find their tracks."
+
+When Arthur, mittened and snow-shoed, had departed in search of Lee and
+Gay, the remaining sisters gathered about the full-page advertisement in
+_The Four Seasons_, and passed rapidly from anger to mild hysterics.
+Mary was the last to laugh.
+
+And she said: "Girls, I will tell you an awful secret. I never would
+have consented to this, but as long as Lee and Gay have gone and done
+it, I'm--_glad_."
+
+"The only thing _I_ mind," said Eve, "is Arthur. He'll take it hard."
+
+"We can't help that," said Maud. "Business is business. And this
+wretched, shocking piece of mischief spells success. I feel it in my
+bones. There's no use being silly about ourselves. We've got our way to
+make in the world--and, as a sextet----"
+
+She lingered over the picture.
+
+"As a sextet, there's no use denying that we are rather lovely to look
+at."
+
+Phyllis put in a word blindly.
+
+"Maud," she said, "among the applications you have received, how many
+are from women?"
+
+Maud laughed aloud.
+
+"None," she said.
+
+"There wouldn't be," said Eve.
+
+"Well," said Mary, "compared to the rest of you, I'm quite an old woman,
+and I say--so much the better."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Even on going into the open air from a warmed room, it would not have
+struck you as a cold day. But thermometers marked a number of degrees
+worse than zero. The sky was bright and blue. Not a breath of wind
+stirred. In the woods the underbrush was hidden by the smooth
+accumulations of snow, so that the going was open.
+
+The Adirondack winter climate is such that a man runs less risk of
+getting too cold than of getting too warm. Arthur, moving swiftly in a
+great circle so that at some point he should come upon the tracks of his
+culprit sisters, shed first his mittens and then his coat. The former he
+thrust into his trousers pocket, and he hung the latter to a broken limb
+where he could easily find it on his return.
+
+"There would be some sense in running away in summer," he thought. "It
+would take an Indian or a dog to track them then, but in winter--I gave
+them credit for more sense."
+
+He came upon the outgoing marks of their snow-shoes presently, just
+beyond Phyllis's garden, to the north of the camp. In imagination he saw
+the two lithe young beauties striding sturdily and tirelessly over the
+snow, and then and there the extreme pinnacles of his anger toppled and
+fell. There is no occupation to which a maiden may lend herself so
+virginal as woodmanship. And he fell to thinking less of his young
+sisters' indiscretion than of the extreme and unsophisticated innocence
+which had led them into it. What could girls know of men, anyway? What
+did his sisters know of him? That he had been extravagant and rather
+fast. Had they an inkling of what being rather fast meant? His smooth
+forehead contracted with painful thoughts. Even Mary's indignation upon
+the discovery of the photograph in _The Four Seasons_ had not matched
+his own. She had been angry because she was a gentlewoman, and
+gentlewomen shun publicity. She had not even guessed at the degradation
+to which broadcast pictures of beautiful women are subjected. His anger
+turned from his sisters presently and glowered upon the whole world of
+men; his hands closed to strike, and opened to clutch and choke. That
+Lee and Gay had done such a thing was earnest only of innocence coupled
+with mischief. They must know that what they had done was wrong, since
+they had fled from any immediate consequences, but how wrong it was they
+could never dream, even in nightmares. Nor was it possible for him to
+explain. How, then, could any anger which he might visit upon them
+benefit? And who was he, when it came to that, to assume the
+unassailable morality of a parent?
+
+It came to this: That Arthur followed the marks of Lee's and Gay's
+snow-shoes mechanically, and raged, not against them, not against the
+world of men, but against himself. He had said once in jest that many an
+artistic impulse had been crushed by the camera and the pianola. But how
+pitifully true this had been in his own case! If he had been born into
+less indulgence, he might have painted, he might have played. The only
+son in a large family of daughters, his father and mother had worshipped
+the ground upon which his infant feet had trod. He had never known what
+it was to want anything. He had never been allowed to turn a hand to his
+own honest advantage. He was the kind of boy who, under less golden
+circumstances, would have saved his pocket-money and built with his own
+hands a boat or whatever he needed. There is a song: "I want what I want
+when I want it." Arthur might have sung: "I get what I'm going to want
+and then I don't want it."
+
+His contemporaries had greatly envied him, when, as a mere matter of
+justice, they should have pitied him. All his better impulses had been
+gnarled by indulgence. He had done things that showed natural ability;
+but of what use was that? He was too old now to learn to draw. He played
+rather delightfully upon the piano, or any other instrument, for that
+matter. To what end? He could not read a note.
+
+There was nothing that Arthur could not have done, if he had been let
+alone. There were many things that he would have done.
+
+At college he had seen in one smouldering flash of intuition how badly
+he had started in the race of life. When others were admiring his many
+brilliancies, he was mourning for the lost years when, under almost any
+guidance save that of his beloved father, he might have laid such sturdy
+foundations to future achievements--pedestals on which to erect statues.
+
+Self-knowledge had made him hard for a season and cynical. As a tired
+sea-gull miscalculates distance and dips his wings into the sea, so
+Arthur, when he thought that he was merely flying low the better to see
+and to observe, had alighted without much struggling in a pool of
+dissipation and vice.
+
+The memory was more of a weariness to him than a sharp regret. Of what
+use is remorse--after the fact? Let it come before and all will be well.
+
+At last, more by accident than design, he drew out of the muddy ways
+into which he had fallen and limped off--not so much toward better
+things as away from worse.
+
+Then it was that Romance had come for him, and carried him on strong
+wings upward toward the empyrean.
+
+Even now, she was only twenty. She had married a man more than twice her
+age. He had been her guardian, and she had felt that it was her duty.
+Her marriage proved desperately unhappy. She and Arthur met, and, as
+upon a signal, loved.
+
+For a few weeks of one golden summer, they had known the ethereal bliss
+of seeing each other every day. They met as little children, and so
+parted. They accepted the law and convention which stood between them,
+not as a barrier to be crossed or circumvented but with childlike faith
+as a something absolutely impassable--like the space which separates the
+earth and the moon.
+
+They remained utterly innocent in thought and deed, merely loved and
+longed and renounced so very hard that their poor young hearts almost
+broke.
+
+Not so the "old man."
+
+It happened, in the autumn of that year, that he brought his wife to New
+York, in whose Wall Street he had intricate interests. He learned that
+she was by way of seeing more of Arthur than a girl of eighteen married
+to a man of nearly fifty ought to see. He did not at once burst into
+coarse abuse of her, but, worldly-wise, set detectives to watch her. He
+had, you may say, set his heart upon her guilt. To learn that she was
+utterly innocent enraged him. One day he had the following conversation
+with a Mr. May, of a private detective bureau:
+
+"You followed them?"
+
+"To the park."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"They bought a bag of peanuts and fed the squirrels."
+
+"Go on."
+
+"Then they rode in a swan-boat. Then they walked up to the reservoir and
+around it. Then they came back to the hotel."
+
+"Did they separate in the office?"
+
+"On the sidewalk."
+
+"But last night? She said she was dining with her sister and going to
+the play. What did she do last night?"
+
+"She did what she said. Believe me, sir--if I know anything of men and
+women, you're paying me to run fool's errands for you. _They_ don't need
+any watching."
+
+"You have seen them--kiss?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Hold hands?"
+
+"I haven't seen any physical demonstration. I guess they like each other
+a lot. And that's all there is to it."
+
+But the "old man" made a scene with her, just such a scene as he would
+have made if the detective's report had been, in effect, the opposite of
+what it was. He assumed that she was guilty; but, for dread of scandal,
+he would not seek a divorce. He exacted a promise that she would not see
+Arthur, or write to him, or receive letters from him.
+
+Then, having agreed with certain magnates to go out to China upon the
+question of a great railroad and a great loan, he carried her off with
+him, then and there. So that when Arthur called at the hotel, he was
+told that they had gone but that there was a note for him. If it was
+from the wife, the husband had dictated it:
+
+     Don't try to see me ever any more. If you do, it will only make my
+     life a hell on earth.
+
+That had been the tangible end of Arthur's romance. But the intangible
+ends were infinite and not yet. His whole nature had changed. He had
+suffered and could no longer bear to inflict pain.
+
+He lifted his head and looked up a little slope of snow. Near the top,
+wonderfully rosy and smiling, sat his culprit sisters. He had forgotten
+why he had come. He smiled in his sudden embarrassment.
+
+"Don't shoot, colonel," called Gay, "and we'll come down."
+
+"Promise, then," he said, "that you'll never be naughty again."
+
+"We promise," they said.
+
+And they trudged back to camp, with jokes and laughter and three very
+sharp appetites.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Beyond seeing to it that the alluring picture of his sisters should not
+appear in any future issues of the magazines, Arthur did not refer to
+the matter again. The girls, more particularly Lee and Gay, always
+attributed the instant success of The Camp to the picture; but it is
+sanely possible that an inn run upon such very extravagant principles
+was bound to be a success anyway. America is full of people who will pay
+anything for the comforts of home with the cares and exasperations left
+out.
+
+A majority of the early applications received at The Camp office, and
+politely rejected by Maud, were from old friends of the family, who were
+eagerly willing to give its fallen finances a boost. But the girls were
+determined that their scheme should stand upon its own meritorious feet
+or not at all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Samuel Langham learned that the ice was going out of New Moon Lake,
+he wrote that he would arrive at Carrytown at such and such an hour,
+and begged that a boat of some sort might be there to meet him. His
+guests, he explained, would follow in a few days.
+
+"Dear me," said Maud, "it will be very trying to have him alone--just
+like a real guest. If he'd only bring his friends with him, why, they
+could entertain him. As it is, we'll have to. Because, even if we are
+innkeepers now, we belong to the same station in life that he does, and
+he knows it and we know it. I don't see how we can ever have the face to
+send in a bill afterward."
+
+"I don't either," said Mary, "but we must."
+
+"I've never pictured him," said Arthur, "as a man who would brave early
+spring in the Adirondacks for the sake of a few trout."
+
+"I bet you my first dividend," said Lee, "that his coat is lined with
+sable."
+
+It was.
+
+As the _Streak_, which had gone to Carrytown to meet him, slid for the
+dock (his luggage was to follow in the _Tortoise_, a fatter, slower
+power-boat), there might have been seen standing amidships a tall, stout
+gentleman of about thirty-six or more, enveloped in a handsome overcoat
+lined with sable.
+
+He wore thick eye-glasses which the swiftness of the _Streak_'s going
+had opaqued with icy mist, so that for the moment Mr. Samuel Langham
+was blind as a mole. Nevertheless, determined to enjoy whatever the
+experience had in store for him, he beamed from right to left, as if a
+pair of keen eyes were revealing to him unexpected beauties and
+delights.
+
+Arthur, loathing the rôle, was on the float to meet him.
+
+On hearing himself addressed by name, Mr. Samuel Langham removed one of
+his fur-lined gloves and thrust forward a plump, well-groomed hand.
+
+"I believe that I am shaking hands with Mr. Darling," he said in a slow,
+cultivated voice; "but my glasses are blurred and I cannot see anything.
+Is my foot going for the float--or the water?"
+
+"Step boldly," said Arthur; and, in a hurried aside, as he perceived the
+corner of a neatly folded greenback protruding between two of Mr.
+Langham's still-gloved fingers: "You are not to be subjected to the
+annoyance of the tipping system. We pay our servants extra to make the
+loss up to them."
+
+Mr. Langham's mouth, which was rather like a Cupid's bow, tightened. And
+he handed the greenback to the engineer of the _Streak_, just as if
+Arthur's remonstrance had not been spoken. On the way to the office he
+explained.
+
+"Whenever I go anywhere," he said, "I find persons in humble situations
+who smile at me and wish me well. I smile back and wish them well. It is
+because, at some time or other, I have tipped them. To me the system has
+never been an annoyance but a delightful opportunity for the exercise of
+tact and judgment."
+
+He came to a dead halt, planting his feet firmly.
+
+"I shall be allowed to tip whomsoever I like," he said flatly, "or I
+shan't stay."
+
+"Our ambition," said Arthur stiffly, "is to make our guests comfortable.
+Our rule against tipping is therefore abolished."
+
+They entered the office. Mr. Langham could now see, having wiped the fog
+from his glasses. He saw a lovely girl in black, seated at a table
+facing him. Beyond her was a roaring fire of backlogs. Arthur presented
+Mr. Langham.
+
+"Are you frozen?" asked Maud. "Too cold to write your name in our
+brand-new register?"
+
+He took the pen which she offered him and wrote his name in a large,
+clear hand, worthy of John Hancock.
+
+"It's the first name in the book," he said. "It's always been a very
+lucky name for me. I hope it will be for you."
+
+Arthur had escaped.
+
+"There is one more formality," said Maud: "breakfast."
+
+"I had a little something in my car," said Mr. Langham; "but if it
+wouldn't be too much trouble--er--just a few little eggs and things."
+
+"How would it be," said Maud, "if I took you straight to the kitchen? My
+sister Mary presides there, and you shall tell her exactly what you
+want, and she will see that you get it."
+
+A rosy blush mounted Mr. Langham's good-natured face.
+
+"Oh," he said, with the deepest sincerity, "if I am to have the _entrée_
+to the kitchen, I shall be happy. I will tell you a secret. At my club I
+always breakfast in the kitchen. It's against the rules, but I do it. A
+friendly chef--beds of glowing charcoal--burnished copper--piping-hot
+tidbits."
+
+It was up-hill to Smoke House, and Mr. Langham, in his burdensome
+overcoat, grew warm on the way, and was puffing slightly when he got
+there.
+
+"Mary," Maud called--"Mr. Langham!"
+
+"The kitchen is the foundation of all domestic happiness," said he. "I
+have come to yours as fast as I could. I think--I _know_, that I never
+saw a brighter, happier-looking kitchen."
+
+He knew also that he had never seen so beautiful a presiding deity.
+
+"Your sister," he said, "told me that I could have a little breakfast
+right here." And he repeated the statement concerning his club kitchen.
+
+"Of course, you can!" said Mary.
+
+"Just a few eggs," he said, "and if there's anything green----"
+
+They called the chef. He was very happy because the season had begun. He
+assigned Mr. Langham a seat from which to see and at which to be served,
+then with the wrist-and-finger elegance of a prestidigitator, he began
+to prepare a few eggs and something green.
+
+"The trout--" Mary began dutifully, as it was for the sake of these that
+Mr. Langham had ostensibly come so early in the season.
+
+"Trout?" he said.
+
+"The fishing--" She made a new beginning.
+
+"The fishing, Miss Darling," he said, "will be of interest to my
+friends. For my part, I don't fish. I have, in common with the kind of
+boat from which fishing is done, nothing but the fact that we are both
+ticklish. I saw your prospectus. I said: 'I shall be happy there, and
+well taken care of.' Something told me that I should be allowed to
+breakfast in the kitchen. The more I thought about it the less I felt
+that I could wait for the somewhat late opening of your season, so I
+pretended to be a fisher of trout. And here I am. But, mark you," he
+added, "a few trout on the table now and then--I like that!"
+
+"You shall have them," said Mary, "and you shall breakfast in the
+kitchen. I do--always."
+
+"Do you?" he exclaimed. "Why not together, then?"
+
+His eyes shone with pleasure.
+
+"I should be too early for you," she said.
+
+"You don't know me. Is it ever too early to eat? Because I am stout,
+people think I have all the moribund qualities that go with it. As a
+matter of fact, I rise whenever, in my judgment, the cook is dressed and
+down. Is it gross to be fond of food? So many people think so. I differ
+with them. Not to care what you eat is gross--in my way of thinking. Is
+there anything, for instance, more fresh in coloring, more adequate in
+line, than a delicately poached egg on a blue-and-white plate? You call
+this building Smoke House? I shall always be looking in. Do you mind?"
+
+"Indeed we don't," said Mary. "Do we, chef?"
+
+Chef laid a finger to his lips. It was no time for talk. "Never disturb
+a sleeping child or a cooking egg," was one of his maxims.
+
+"I knew that I should be happy here," said Mr. Langham. "I am."
+
+Whenever he had a chance he gazed at Mary. It was her face in the row of
+six that had lured him out of all his habits and made him feel that the
+camp offered him a genuine chance for happiness. To find that she
+presided over the kitchen had filled his cup to the brim. But when he
+remembered that he was fat and fond of good things to eat and drink, his
+heart sank.
+
+He determined that he would eat but three eggs. They were, however,
+prepared in a way that was quite new to him, and in the determined
+effort to discern the ingredients and the method he ate five.
+
+"There is something very keen about your Adirondack air," he explained
+guiltily.
+
+But Mary had warmed to him. Her heart and her reputation were involved
+in the _cuisine_. She knew that the better you feed people the more they
+love you. She was not revolted by Mr. Langham's appetite. She felt that
+even a canary of a man must have fallen before the temptation of those
+eggs.
+
+They were her own invention. And chef had executed them to the very turn
+of perfection.
+
+Almost from the moment of his arrival, then, Mr. Samuel Langham began to
+eat his way into the heart of the eldest Miss Darling.
+
+In culinary matters a genuine intimacy sprang up between them. They
+exchanged ideas. They consulted. They compared menus. They mastered the
+contents of the late Mr. Darling's cellars.
+
+Mr. Langham chose Lone House for his habitation. He liked the little
+balcony that thrust out over the lake between the two pine-trees. And by
+the time that his guests were due to arrive, he had established himself,
+almost, in the affections of the entire family.
+
+"He may be greedy," said Arthur, "but he's the most courteous man that
+ever 'sat at meat among ladies'!"
+
+"He's got the kindest heart," said Mary, "that ever beat."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Mr. Langham's five guests arrived somewhat noisily, smoking five long
+cigars. Lee and Gay, watching the float from a point of vantage, where
+they themselves were free from observation, observed that three of the
+trout fishermen were far older than they had led themselves to expect.
+
+"That leaves only one for us," said Gay.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Can't you see from here that the fifth is an Englishman?"
+
+"Yes," said Lee. "His clothes don't fit, and yet he feels perfectly
+comfortable in them."
+
+"It isn't so much the clothes," said Gay, "as the face. The other faces
+are excited because they have ridden fast in a fast boat, though they've
+probably often done it before. Now he's probably never been in a fast
+boat in his life till to-day, and yet he looks thoroughly bored."
+
+The Englishman without changing his expression made some remark to the
+other five. They roared. The Englishman blushed, and looked vaguely
+toward a dark-blue mountain that rose with some grandeur beyond the
+farther shore of the lake.
+
+"Do you suppose," said Lee, "that what he said was funny or just dumb?"
+
+"I think it was funny," said Gay, "but purely accidental."
+
+"I think I know the other youth," said Lee; "I think I have danced with
+him. Didn't Mr. Langham say there was a Renier among his guests?"
+
+"H. L.," Gay assented.
+
+"That's the one," Lee remembered. "Harry Larkins Renier. We have danced.
+If he doesn't remember, he shall be snubbed. I like the old guy with the
+Mark Twain hair."
+
+"Don't you know _him_? I do. I have seen his picture often. He's the
+editor of the _Evening Star_. Won't Arthur be glad!"
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"Walter Leyden O'Malley. He's the literary descendant of the great Dana.
+Don't talk to me, child; I know a great deal."
+
+Gay endeavored to assume the look of an encyclopædia and failed.
+
+"Mr. Langham," said Lee, "mentioned three other names, Alston,
+Pritchard, and Cox. Which do you suppose is which?"
+
+"I think that Pritchard is the very tall one who looks like a Kentucky
+colonel; Cox is the one with the very large face; of course, the
+Englishman is Alston."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"We can find out from Maud."
+
+When the new arrivals, escorted by Arthur and Mr. Langham, had left the
+office, Lee and Gay hurried in to look at their signatures and to
+consult Maud as to identities.
+
+The Kentucky-colonel-looking man proved to be Alston. Cox had the large
+face, and the Englishman--John Arthur Merrivale Pritchard, as was to be
+expected--wrote the best hand. Mr. O'Malley, the famous editor, wrote
+the worst. His signature looked as if it had been traced by an inky worm
+writhing in agony.
+
+"Tell us at once," Gay demanded, "what they are like."
+
+Maud regarded her frolicsome sisters with inscrutable eyes, and said:
+
+"At first, you think that Mr. Cox is a heartless old cynic, but when you
+get to know him really well--I remember an instance that occurred in the
+early sixties----"
+
+"Oh, dry up!" said Lee. "Are they nice and presentable, like fat old Sam
+Langham?"
+
+"The three old ones," said Maud, "made me think of three very young boys
+just loose from school. Messrs. Renier and Pritchard, however, seem more
+used to holidays. There is, however, a complication. All five wish to go
+fishing as soon as they can change into fishing clothes, and there
+aren't enough guides to go around."
+
+"What's the trouble?" asked Gay eagerly.
+
+"Bullard," Maud explained, "has sent word that his wife is having a
+baby, and Benton has gone up to Crotched Lake West to see if the ice is
+out of it. That leaves only three guides to go around. Benton oughtn't
+to have gone. Nobody told him to. But he once read the Declaration of
+Independence, and every now and then the feeling comes over him that he
+must act accordingly."
+
+"But," exclaimed Lee, "what's the matter with Gay and me?"
+
+"Nothing, I hope," said Maud; "you look well. I trust you feel well."
+
+"We want to be guides," said Gay; "we want to be useful. Hitherto we've
+done nothing to help. Mary works like a slave in the kitchen; you here.
+Eve will never leave the laundry once the wash gets big. Phyllis has her
+garden, in which things will begin to grow by and by, but we--we have no
+excuse for existence--none whatever. Now, I could show Mr. Renier where
+the chances of taking fish are the best."
+
+"No," said Lee firmly; "I ought to guide him. It's only fair. He once
+guided me--I've always remembered--bang into a couple who outweighed us
+two to one, and down we went."
+
+"Mary will hardly approve of you youngsters going on long expeditions
+with strange young men," Maud was quite sure; "and, of course, Arthur
+won't."
+
+Lee and Gay began to sulk.
+
+At that moment Arthur came into the office.
+
+"Halloo, you two!" he said. "Been looking for you, and even shouting.
+The fact is, we're short of guides, and Mary and I think----"
+
+Lee and Gay burst into smiles.
+
+"What did we tell you, Maud? Of course, we will. There are no wiser
+guides in this part of the woods."
+
+"That," said Arthur, "is a fact. The older men looked alarmed when I
+suggested that two of my sisters--you see, they've always had
+native-born woodsmen and even Indians----"
+
+"Then," said Lee, "we are to have the guileless youths. I speak for
+Renier."
+
+"Meanie," said Gay.
+
+"Lee ought to have first choice," said Arthur. "It's always been
+supposed that Lee is your senior by a matter of twenty minutes."
+
+"True or not," said Gay, "she looks it. Then I'm to guide the
+Englishman."
+
+"If you don't mind." Arthur regarded her, smiling. He couldn't help it.
+She was _so_ pretty. "And I'd advise you not to be too eager to show
+off. Mr. Pritchard has hunted and fished more than all of us put
+together."
+
+"That little pink-faced snip!" exclaimed Gay. "I'll sure see how much he
+knows."
+
+Half an hour later she was rowing him leisurely in the direction of
+Placid Brook, and examining his somewhat remarkable outfit with
+wondering eyes. This was not difficult, since his own eyes, which were
+clear brown, and very shy, were very much occupied in looking over the
+contents of the large-tackle box.
+
+"If you care to rig your rod," said Gay presently, "and cast about as we
+go, you might take something between here and the brook."
+
+"Do you mean," he said, "that you merely throw about you at random, and
+that it is possible to take fish?"
+
+"Of course," said she--"when they are rising."
+
+"But then the best one could hope for," he drawled, "would be
+indiscriminate fish."
+
+"Just what do you mean by that?"
+
+"Why!"--and this time he looked up and smiled very shyly--"if you were
+after elephant and came across a herd, would you pick out a bull with a
+fine pair of tusks, or would you fire indiscriminately into the thick of
+them, and perhaps bring down the merest baby?"
+
+"I never heard of picking your fish," said Gay.
+
+"Dear me," he commented, "then you have nearly a whole lifetime of
+delightful study before you!"
+
+He unslung a pair of field-glasses, focussed them, and began to study
+the surface of the placid lake, not the far-off surface but the surface
+within twenty or thirty feet. Then he remarked:
+
+"Your flies aren't greatly different from ours. I think we shall find
+something nearly right. One can never tell. The proclivities of trout
+and char differ somewhat. I have never taken char."
+
+"You don't think you are after char now, do you?" exclaimed Gay.
+"Because, if so--this lake contains bass, trout, lake-trout, sunfish,
+shiners, and bullheads, but no char."
+
+Pritchard smiled a little sadly and blushed. He hated to put people
+right.
+
+"Your brook-trout," he said, "your _salmo fontinalis_, isn't a trout at
+all. He's a char."
+
+Gay put her back into the rowing with some temper. She felt that the
+Englishman had insulted the greatest of all American institutions. The
+repartee which sprang to her lips was somewhat feeble.
+
+"If a trout is a char," she said angrily, "then an onion is a fruit."
+
+To her astonishment, Mr. Pritchard began to laugh. He dropped everything
+and gave his whole attention to it. He laughed till the tears came and
+the delicate guide boat shook from stem to stern. Presently the germ of
+his laughing spread, and Gay came down with a sharp attack of it
+herself. She stopped rowing. Two miles off, a loon, that most exclusive
+laugher of the North Woods, took fright, dove, and remained under for
+ten minutes.
+
+The young people in the guide boat looked at each other through smarting
+tears.
+
+"I am learning fast," said Gay, "that you count your fish before you
+catch them, that trout are char, and that Englishmen laugh at other
+people's jokes."
+
+She rowed on.
+
+"Don't forget to tell me when you've chosen your fish," she remarked.
+
+"You shall help me choose," he said; "I insist. I speak for a
+three-pounder."
+
+"The event of a lifetime!"
+
+"Why, Miss Gay," he said, "it's all the event of a lifetime. The Camp,
+the ride in the motor-boat, the wonderful, wonderful breakfast, water
+teeming with fish, the woods, and the mountains--millions of years ago
+it was decreed that you and I should rock a boat with laughter in the
+midst of New Moon Lake. And yet you speak of a three-pounder as the
+event of a lifetime! My answer is a defiance. We shall take one _salmo
+fontinalis_--one wily char. He shall not weigh three pounds; he shall
+weigh a trifle more. Then we shall put up our tackle and go home to a
+merry dinner."
+
+"Mr. Pritchard," said Gay, "I'll bet you anything you like that you
+don't take a trout--or a char, if you like--that will weigh three pounds
+or over. I'll bet you ten to one."
+
+"Don't do that," he said; "it's an even shot. What will you bet?"
+
+"I'll bet you my prospective dividends for the year," she said,
+"against----"
+
+"My prospective title?"
+
+He looked rather solemn, but laughter bubbled from Gay.
+
+"It's a good sporting proposition," said Pritchard. "It's a very sound
+title--old, resonant--and unless you upset us and we drown, tolerably
+certain to be mine to pay--in case I lose."
+
+"I don't bet blindly," said Gay. "What is the title?"
+
+"I shall be the Earl of Merrivale," said he; "and if I fail this day to
+take a char weighing three pounds or over, you will be the Countess of
+Merrivale."
+
+"Dear me!" said Gay, "who ever heard of so much depending on a mere
+fish? But I don't like my side of the bet. It's all so sudden. I don't
+know you well enough, and you're sure to lose."
+
+"I'll take either end of the bet you don't like," said Mr. Pritchard
+gravely. "If I land the three-pounder, you become the countess; if I
+don't, I pay you the amount of your dividends for the year. Is that
+better?"
+
+"Much," smiled Gay; "because, with the bet in this form, there is
+practically no danger that either of us will lose anything. My dividends
+probably won't amount to a row of pins, and you most certainly will not
+land so big a fish."
+
+Meanwhile they had entered the mouth of Placid Brook. The surface was
+dimpling--rings became, spread, merged in one another, and were not. The
+fish were feeding.
+
+"Let us land in the meadow," said Mr. Pritchard, his brown eyes clear
+and sparkling, "and spy upon the enemy."
+
+"Are you going to leave your rod and things in the boat?"
+
+"For the present--until we have located our fish."
+
+They landed, and he advanced upon the brook by a detour, stealthily,
+crouching, his field-glasses at attention. Once he turned and spoke to
+Gay in an authoritative whisper:
+
+"Try not to show above the bushes."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The sun was warm on the meadow, and although the bushes along its margin
+were leafless, the meadow itself had a greenish look, and the feel of
+the air was such that Gay, upon whom silence and invisibility had been
+enjoined, longed to dance in full sight of the trout and to sing at the
+top of her voice: "Oh, that we two were Maying!" Instead, she crouched
+humbly and in silence at Pritchard's side, while he studied the dimpling
+brook through his powerful field-glasses.
+
+Gay had never seen red Indians except in Buffalo Bill's show, where it
+is made worth their while to be very noisy. But she had read her Cooper
+and her Ballantyne,
+
+  "Ballantyne, the brave,
+  And Cooper of the wood and wave,"
+
+and she knew of the early Christian patience with which they are
+supposed to go about the business of hunting and fishing.
+
+Pritchard, she observed, had a weather-red face and high cheek-bones. He
+was smooth-shaved. He wore no hat. But for his miraculously short-cut
+hair, his field-glasses, his suit of coarse Scotch wool, whose colors
+blended so well with the meadow upon which he crouched, he might have
+been an Indian. His head, the field-glasses, the hands which clasped
+them, moved--nothing else.
+
+"Is it a bluff?" thought Gay. "Is he just posing, or is there something
+in it?"
+
+Half an hour passed--three quarters. Gay was pale and grimly smiling.
+Her legs had gone to sleep. But she would not give in. If an Englishman
+could fish so patiently, why, so could she. She was fighting her own
+private battle of Bunker Hill--of New Orleans.
+
+Pritchard lowered his glasses, handed them to Gay, and pointed up the
+brook and across, to where a triangular point of granite peered a few
+inches above the surface. Gay looked through the glasses, and Pritchard
+began to whisper in her ear:
+
+"Northwest of that point of rock, about two feet--keep looking just
+there, and I'll try to tell you what to see."
+
+"There's a fish feeding," she answered; "but he must be a baby, he just
+makes a bubble on the surface."
+
+"There are three types of insect floating over him," said Pritchard; "I
+don't know your American beasts by name, but there is a black, a brown,
+and a grayish spiderlike thing. He's taking the last. If you see one of
+the gray ones floating where he made his last bubble, watch it."
+
+Gay presently discerned such an insect so floating, and watched it. It
+passed within a few inches of where the feeding trout had last risen and
+disappeared, and a tiny ring gently marked the spot where it had been
+sucked under. Gay saw a black insect pass over the fatal spot unscathed,
+then browns; and then, once more, a gray, very tiny in the body but with
+longish legs, approached and was engulfed.
+
+"Now for the tackle box," Pritchard whispered.
+
+They withdrew from the margin of the brook, Gay in that curious ecstasy,
+half joy, half sorrow, induced by sleepy legs. She lurched and almost
+fell. Pritchard caught her.
+
+"Was the vigil too long?" he asked.
+
+"I liked it," she said. "But my legs went to sleep and are just waking
+up. Tell me things. There were fish rising bold--jumping clean
+out--making the water boil. But you weren't interested in them."
+
+"It was noticeable," said Pritchard, "and perhaps you noticed that one
+fish was feeding alone. He blew his little rings--without fear or
+hurry--none of the other fishes dared come anywhere near him. He lives
+in the vicinity of that pointed rock. The water there is probably deep
+and, in the depths, very cold. Who knows but a spring bubbles into a
+brook at the base of that rock? The fish lives there and rules the water
+around him for five or six yards. He is selfish, fat, and old. He feeds
+quietly because nobody dares dispute his food with him. He is the
+biggest fish in this reach of the brook. At least, he is the biggest
+that is feeding this morning. Now we know what kind of a fly he is
+taking. Probably I have a close imitation of it in my fly box. If not,
+we shall have to make one. Then we must try to throw it just above
+him--very lightly--float it into his range of vision, and when he sucks
+it into his mouth, strike--and if we are lucky we shall then proceed to
+take him."
+
+Gay, passionately fond of woodcraft, listened with a kind of awe.
+
+"But," she said, seeing an objection, "how do you know he weighs three
+pounds and over?"
+
+"Frankly," said Pritchard, "I don't. I am gambling on _that_." He shot
+her a shy look. "Just hoping. I know that he is big. I believe we shall
+land him. I hope and pray that he weighs over three pounds."
+
+Gay blushed and said nothing. She was beginning to think that Pritchard
+might land a three-pounder as well as not--and she had light-heartedly
+agreed, in that event, to become the Countess of Merrivale. Of course,
+the bet was mere nonsense. But suppose, by any fleeting chance, that
+Pritchard should not so regard it? What _should_ she do? Suppose that
+Pritchard had fallen victim to a case of love at first sight? It would
+not, she was forced to admit (somewhat demurely), be the first instance
+in her own actual experience. There was a young man who had so fallen in
+love with her, and who, a week later, not knowing the difference--so
+exactly the triplets resembled each other--had proposed to Phyllis.
+
+They drew the guide boat up onto the meadows and Pritchard, armed with a
+scoop-net of mesh as fine as mosquito-netting, leaned over the brook and
+caught one of the grayish flies that were tickling the appetite of the
+big trout.
+
+This fly had a body no bigger than a gnat's.
+
+Pritchard handed Gay a box of japanned tin. It was divided into
+compartments, and each compartment was half full of infinitesimal trout
+flies. They were so small that you had to use a pair of tweezers in
+handling them.
+
+Pritchard spread his handkerchief on the grass, and Gay dumped the flies
+out on it and spread them for examination. And then, their heads very
+close together, they began to hunt for one which would match the live
+one that Pritchard had caught.
+
+"But they're too small," Gay objected. "The hooks would pull right
+through a trout's lip."
+
+"Not always," said Pritchard. "How about this one?"
+
+"Too dark," said Gay.
+
+"Here we are then--a match or not?"
+
+The natural fly and the artificial placed side by side were wonderfully
+alike.
+
+"They're as like as Lee and me," said Gay.
+
+"Lee?"
+
+"Three of us are triplets," she explained. "We look exactly alike--and
+we never forgive people who get us mixed up."
+
+Pritchard abandoned all present thoughts of trout-fishing by scientific
+methods. He looked into her face with wonder.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me," said he, "that there are two other
+D-D-Darlings exactly like you?"
+
+"Exactly--a nose for a nose; an eye for an eye."
+
+"It isn't true," he proclaimed. "There is nobody in the whole world in
+the least like you."
+
+"Some time," said Gay, "you will see the three of us in a row. We shall
+look inscrutable and say nothing. You will not be able to tell which of
+us went fishing with you and which stayed at home----"
+
+"'This little pig went to market,'" he began, and abruptly became
+serious. "Is that a challenge?"
+
+"Yes," said Gay. "I fling down my gauntlet."
+
+"And I," said Pritchard, "step forward and, in the face of all the
+world, lift it from the ground--and proclaim for all the world to hear
+that there is nobody like my lady--and that I am so prepared to prove at
+any place or time--come weal, come woe. Let the heavens fall!"
+
+"If you know me from the others," Gay's eyes gleamed, "you will be the
+first strange young man that ever did, and I shall assign and appoint in
+the inmost shrines of memory a most special niche for you."
+
+Pritchard bowed very humbly.
+
+"That will not be necessary," he said. "If I land the three-pounder. In
+that case, I should be always with you."
+
+"I wish," said Gay, "that you wouldn't refer so earnestly to a piece of
+nonsense. Upon repetition, a joke ceases to be a joke."
+
+Pritchard looked troubled.
+
+"I'm sorry," he said simply. "If it is the custom of the country to bet
+and then crawl, so be it. In Rome, I hasten to do as the Romans do. But
+I thought our bet was honorable and above-board. It seems it was just
+an--an Indian bet."
+
+Gay flushed angrily.
+
+"You shall not belittle anything American," she said. "It was a bet. I
+meant it. I stand by it. If you catch your big fish I marry you. And if
+I have to marry you, I will lead you such a dance----"
+
+"You wouldn't have to," Pritchard put in gently, "you wouldn't have to
+lead me, I mean. If you and I were married, I'd just naturally
+dance--wouldn't I? When a man sorrows he weeps; when he rejoices he
+dances. It's all very simple and natural----"
+
+He turned his face to the serene heavens, and, very gravely:
+
+"Ah, Lord!" he said. "Vouchsafe to me, undeserving but hopeful, this
+day, a char--_salmo fontinalis_--to weigh a trifle over three pounds,
+for the sake of all that is best and sweetest in this best of all
+possible worlds."
+
+If his face or voice had had a suspicion of irreverence, Gay would have
+laughed. Instead, she found that she wanted to cry and that her heart
+was beating unquietly.
+
+Mr. Pritchard dismissed sentiment from his mind, and with loving hands
+began to take a powerful split-bamboo rod from its case.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+Gay's notion of scientific fishing might have been thus summed: Know
+just where to fish and use the lightest rod made. Her own trout-rod
+weighed two and a half ounces without the reel. Compared to it,
+Pritchard's was a coarse and heavy instrument. His weighed six ounces.
+
+"You could land a salmon with that," said Gay scornfully.
+
+"I have," said Pritchard. "It's a splendid rod. I doubt if you could
+break it."
+
+"Doesn't give the fish much of a run for his money."
+
+"But how about this, Miss Gay?"
+
+He showed her a leader of finest water-blue catgut. It was nine feet
+long and tapered from the thickness of a human hair to that of a thread
+of spider-spinning. Gay's waning admiration glowed once more.
+
+"That wouldn't hold a minnow," she said.
+
+"We must see about that," he answered; "we must hope that it will hold a
+very large char."
+
+He reeled off eighty or ninety feet of line, and began to grease it with
+a white tallow.
+
+"What's that stuff?" Gay asked.
+
+"Red-deer fat."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To make the line float. We're fishing with a dry-fly, you know."
+
+Gay noticed that the line was tapered from very heavy to very fine.
+
+"Why is that?" she asked.
+
+"It throws better--especially in a wind. The heavy part will carry a fly
+out into half a gale."
+
+He reeled in the line and made his leader fast to it with a swift,
+running hitch, and to the line end of the leader he attached the fly
+which they had chosen. Upon this tiny and exquisite arrangement of fairy
+hook, gray silk, and feathers, he blew paraffin from a pocket atomizer
+that it might float and not become water-logged.
+
+"Do we fish from the shore or the boat?" Gay asked.
+
+"From this shore."
+
+"You'll never reach there from this shore."
+
+"Then I've misjudged the distance. Are you going to use the landing-net
+for me, in case it's necessary?"
+
+Gay caught up the net and once more followed his stealthy advance upon
+the brook.
+
+Pritchard had one preliminary look through the field-glasses,
+straightened his bent back, turned to her with a sorrowing face, and
+spoke aloud.
+
+"He's had enough," he said. "He's stopped feeding."
+
+Gay burst out laughing.
+
+"And our fishing is over for the day? This shall be said of you, Mr.
+Pritchard, that you are a merciful man. You are not what is called in
+this country a 'game hog.'"
+
+"Thank you," he said gravely. "But if you think the fishing is over for
+the day, you don't know a dry-fly fisherman when you see one. We made
+rather a late start. See, most of the fish have stopped feeding. They
+won't begin again much before three. The big fellow will be a little
+later. He has had more than the others; he is older; his digestion is no
+longer like chain lightning; he will sleep sounder, and dream of the
+golden days of his youth when a char was a trout."
+
+"_That_," said Gay, "is distinctly unkind. I have been snubbed enough
+for one day. Are we to stand here, then, till three or four o'clock,
+till his royal highness wakes up and calls for breakfast?"
+
+"No," said Pritchard; "though I would do so gladly, if it were
+necessary, in order to take this particular fish----"
+
+"You might kneel before your rod," said Gay, "like a knight watching his
+arms."
+
+"To rise in the morning and do battle for his lady--I repeat I should do
+so gladly if it would help my chances in the slightest. But it
+wouldn't."
+
+He rested his rod very carefully across two bushes.
+
+"The thing for us to do," he went on, "is to have lunch. I've often
+heard of how comfortable you American guides can make the weary, wayworn
+wanderer at the very shortest notice."
+
+"Is that a challenge?"
+
+"It is an expression of faith."
+
+Their eyes met, and even lingered.
+
+"In that case," said Gay, "I shall do what I may. There is cold lunch in
+the boat, but the wayworn one shall bask in front of a fire and look
+upon his food when it is piping hot. Come!"
+
+Gay rowed him out of the brook and along the shore of the lake for a
+couple of miles. She was on her mettle. She wished him to know that she
+was no lounger in woodcraft. She put her strong young back into the work
+of rowing, and the fragile guide boat flew. Her cheeks glowed, and her
+lips were parted in a smile, but secretly she was filled with dread. She
+knew that she had brought food, raw and cooked; she could see the head
+of her axe gleaming under the middle seat; she would trust Mary for
+having seen to it that there was pepper and salt; but whether in the
+pocket of the Norfolk jacket there were matches, she could not be sure.
+If she stopped rowing to look, the Englishman would think that she had
+stopped because she was tired. And if, later, it was found that she had
+come away without matches, he would laugh at her and her pretenses to
+being a "perfectly good guide."
+
+She beached the boat upon the sand in a wooded cove, and before
+Pritchard could move had drawn it high and dry out of the water. Then
+she laughed aloud, and would not tell him why. She had discovered in the
+right-hand pocket of her coat two boxes of safety-matches, and in the
+left pocket three.
+
+"Don't," said Gay, "this is my job."
+
+She lifted the boat easily and carried it into the woods. Pritchard had
+wished to help. She laid the boat upon soft moss at the side of a
+narrow, mounting trail, slung the package of lunch upon her shoulders,
+and caught up her axe.
+
+"Don't I help at all?" asked Pritchard.
+
+"You are weary and wayworn," said Gay, "and I suppose I ought to carry
+you, too. But I can't. Can you follow? It's not far."
+
+A quarter of a mile up the hillside, between virgin pines which made one
+think bitterly of what the whole mountains might be if the science of
+forestry had been imported a little earlier in the century, the steep
+and stony trail ended in an open space, gravelly and abounding in huge
+bowlders, upon which the sun shone warm and bright. In the midst of the
+place was a spring, black and slowly bubbling. At the base of one great
+rock, a deep rift in whose face made a natural chimney, were traces of
+former fires.
+
+"Wait here," commanded Gay.
+
+Her axe sounded in a thicket, and she emerged presently staggering under
+a load of balsam. She spread it in two great, fragrant mats. Then once
+more she went forth with her axe and returned with fire-wood.
+
+Pritchard, a wistful expression in his eyes, studied her goings and her
+comings, and listened as to music, to the sharp, true ringing of her
+axe.
+
+"By Jove," said he to himself, "that isn't perspiration on her
+forehead--it's honest sweat!"
+
+In spite of the bright sunshine, the heat of the fire was wonderfully
+welcome, and began to bring out the strong, delicious aroma of the
+balsam. Gay sat upon her heels before the fire and cooked. There was a
+sound of boiling and bubbling. The fragrance of coffee mingled with the
+balsam and floated heavenward. During the swift preparation of lunch
+they hardly spoke. Twice Pritchard begged to help and was twice refused.
+
+She spread a cloth between the mats of balsam upon one of which
+Pritchard reclined, and she laid out hot plates and bright silver with
+demure precision.
+
+"Miss Gay," he said very earnestly, "I came to chuckle; I thought that
+at least you would burn the chicken and get smoke in your eyes, but I
+remain to worship the deity of woodcraft. An Indian could not do more
+swiftly or so well."
+
+Gay swelled a little. She had worked very hard; nothing had gone wrong,
+so far. She was not in the least ashamed of herself. But her greatest
+triumph was to come.
+
+Uncas, the chipmunk, had that morning gone for a stroll in the forest.
+He had the spring fever. He had crossed Placid Brook, by a fallen log;
+he had climbed trees, hunted for last year's nuts, and fought battles of
+repartee with other chipmunks. About lunch time, thinking to return to
+Arthur and recount the tale of his wanderings, he smelled a smell of
+cooking and heard a sound of voices, one of which was familiar to him.
+He climbed a bowlder overlooking the clearing, and began to scold. Gay
+and Pritchard looked up.
+
+"My word!" said Pritchard, "what a bold little beggar."
+
+Now, to Gay, the figure of Uncas, well larded with regular meals, was
+not to be confounded with the slim little stripes of the spring woods.
+She knew him at once, and she spoke nonchalantly to Pritchard.
+
+"If you're a great deal in the woods," she said, "you scrape
+acquaintance with many of the inhabitants. That little pig and I are old
+friends. You embarrass him a little. He doesn't know you. If you weren't
+here, he'd come right into my lap and beg."
+
+Pritchard looked at her gravely.
+
+"Truly?" he said.
+
+"I think he will anyway," said Gay, and she made sounds to Uncas which
+reassured him and brought him presently on a tearing run for her lap.
+Here, when he had been fed, he yawned, stretched himself, and fell
+asleep.
+
+"Mowgli's sister!" said Pritchard reverently. "Child, are there the
+scars of wolves' teeth on your wrists and ankles?"
+
+"No, octogenarian," said Gay; "there aren't any marks of any kind. What
+time is it?"
+
+"It is half-past two."
+
+"Then you shall smoke a cigarette, while I wash dishes."
+
+She slid the complaining Uncas from her lap to the ground.
+
+"Unfortunately," said Pritchard, "I didn't bring a cigarette."
+
+"And you've been dying for a smoke all this time? Why don't you ask the
+guide for what you want?"
+
+"Have you such a thing?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"But you--you yourself don't--do you?" He looked troubled.
+
+"No," said Gay. "But my father was always forgetting his, and it made
+him so miserable I got into the habit of carrying a full case years ago
+whenever we went on expeditions. He used to be so surprised and
+delighted. Sometimes I think he used to forget his on purpose, so that
+I could have the triumph of producing mine."
+
+Pritchard smoked at ease. Gay "washed up." Uncas, roused once more from
+slumber by the call of one of his kind, shook himself and trotted off
+into the forest.
+
+Gay, scouring a pan, was beginning to feel that she had known Pritchard
+a long time. She had made him comfortable, cared for him in the wild
+woods, and the knowledge warmed her heart.
+
+Pritchard was saying to himself:
+
+"We like the same sort of things--why not each other?"
+
+"Miss Gay," he said aloud.
+
+"What?"
+
+"In case I land the three-pounder and over, I think I ought to tell you
+that I'm not very rich, and I know you aren't. Would that matter to you?
+I've just about enough," he went on tantalizingly, "to take a girl on
+ripping good trips into central Africa or Australia, but I can't keep
+any great state in England--Merrivale isn't a show place, you know--just
+a few grouse and pheasants and things, and pretty good fishin'."
+
+"However much," said Gay, "I may regret my _bet_, there was nothing
+Indian about it. I'm sure that you are a clean, upright young man. I'm
+a decent sort of girl, though I say it that shouldn't. We might do
+worse. I've heard that love-matches aren't always what they are cracked
+up to be. And I'm quite sure that I want to go to Africa and hunt big
+game."
+
+"Thank you," said Pritchard humbly. "And at least there would be love on
+one side."
+
+"Nonsense," said Gay briskly. "I'm ready, if you are."
+
+Pritchard jumped to his feet and threw away his cigarette.
+
+"Now," he said, "that you've proved everything, _won't_ you let me
+help?"
+
+Gay refused him doubtfully, and then with a burst of generosity:
+
+"Why, yes," she said, "and, by the way, Mr. Pritchard, there was no
+magic about the chipmunk. He's one my brother trained. He lives at The
+Camp, and he was just out for a stroll and happened in on us. I don't
+want you to find out that I'm a fraud from any one--but me."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+The big trout was once more feeding. And Pritchard began to cast his
+diminutive fly up-stream and across. But he cast and got out line by a
+system that was new to Gay. He did not "whip" the brook; he whipped the
+air above it. He never allowed his fly to touch the water but drew it
+back sharply, and, at the same time, reeled out more line with his left
+hand, when it had fallen to within an inch or two of the surface. His
+casts, straight as a rifle-shot, lengthened, and reached out toward the
+bowlder point near which the big trout was feeding, until he was
+throwing, and with consummate ease, a line longer than Gay had ever seen
+thrown.
+
+"It's beautiful," she whispered. "Will you teach me?"
+
+"Of course," he answered.
+
+His fly hovered just above the ring which the trout had just made.
+Pritchard lengthened his line a foot, and cast again and again, with no
+further change but of an inch or two in direction.
+
+"There's a little current," he explained. "If we dropped the fly into
+the middle of the ring, it would float just over his tail and he
+wouldn't see it. He's looking up-stream, whence his blessings flow. The
+fly must float straight down at him, dragging its leader, and not
+dragged by it."
+
+All the while he talked, he continued casting with compact, forceful
+strokes of his right wrist and forearm. At last, his judgment being
+satisfied by the hovering position attained by fly and leader, he
+relaxed his grip of the rod; the fly fell upon the water like
+thistle-down, floated five or six inches, and was sucked under by the
+big trout.
+
+Pritchard struck hard.
+
+There was a second's pause, while the big trout, pained and surprised,
+tried to gather his scattered wits. Three quarters of Pritchard's line
+floated loosely across the brook, but the leader and the fly remained
+under, and Pritchard knew that he had hooked his fish.
+
+Then, and it was sudden--like an explosion--the whole length of floating
+line disappeared, and the tip of Pritchard's powerful rod was dragged
+under after it.
+
+The reel screamed.
+
+"It's a whale!" shouted Gay, forgetting how much depended upon the size
+of the fish, "a whale!"
+
+The time for stealthy movements and talk in whispers was over. Gay
+laughed, shouted, exhorted, while Pritchard, his lips parted, his cheeks
+flushed, gayly fought the great fish.
+
+"Go easy; go easy!" cried Gay. "That hook will never hold him."
+
+But Pritchard knew his implements, and fished with a kind of joyous,
+strong fury.
+
+"When you hang 'em," he exulted, "land em."
+
+The trout was a great noble potentate of those waters. Years ago he had
+abandoned the stealthy ways of lesser fish. He came into the middle of
+the brook where the water is deep and there is freedom from weeds and
+sunken timber, and then up and down and across and across, with blind,
+furious rushes he fought his fight.
+
+It was the strong man without science against the strong man who knows
+how to box. The steady, furious rushes, snubbed and controlled, became
+jerky and spasmodic; in a roar and swirl of water the king trout showed
+his gleaming and enormous back; a second later the sunset colors of his
+side and the white of his belly. Inch by inch, swollen by impotent fury,
+galvanically struggling and rushing, he followed the drag of the leader
+toward the beach, where, ankle-deep in the water, Gay crouched with the
+landing-net.
+
+She trembled from head to foot as a well-bred pointer trembles when he
+has found a covey of quail and holds them in control, waiting for his
+master to walk in upon them.
+
+The big trout, still fighting, turning, and raging, came toward the
+mouth of the half-submerged net.
+
+"How big is he, Miss Gay?"
+
+The voice was cool and steady.
+
+"He's five pounds if he's an ounce," her voice trembled. "He's the
+biggest trout that ever swam.
+
+"He _isn't_ a trout," said Pritchard; "he's a char."
+
+If Gay could have seen Pritchard's face, she would have been struck for
+the first time by a sort of serene beauty that pervaded some of its
+expressions. The smile which he turned upon her crouching figure had in
+it a something almost angelic.
+
+"Bring him a little nearer," she cried, "just a little."
+
+"You're sure he weighs more than three pounds?"
+
+"Sure--sure--don't talk, land him, land him----"
+
+For answer Pritchard heaved strongly upward upon his rod and lifted the
+mighty fish clear of the water. One titanic convulsion of tortured
+muscles, and what was to be expected happened. The leader broke a few
+inches from the trout's lip, and he returned splashing to his native
+element, swam off slowly, just under the surface, then dove deep, and
+was seen no more.
+
+"Oh!" cried Gay. "Why _did_ you? Why _did_ you?"
+
+She had forgotten everything but the fact that the most splendid of all
+trout had been lost.
+
+"Why did you?" she cried again.
+
+"Because," he said serenely and gently, smiling into her grieved and
+flushed face, "I wouldn't have you as the payment of a bet. I will have
+you as a gift or not at all."
+
+They returned to The Camp, Pritchard rowing.
+
+"I owe you your prospective dividends for the year," he said. "If they
+are large, I shall have to give you my note and pay as I can."
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"I think you are angry with me," he said. "I'd give more than a penny
+for your thoughts."
+
+"I was thinking," said she, "that you are very good at fishing, but that
+the art of rowing an Adirondack guide boat has been left out of you."
+
+"Truly," he said, "was that what you were thinking?"
+
+"No," she said; "I was thinking other things. I was thinking that I
+ought to go down on my knees and thank you for breaking the leader. You
+see, I'd made up my mind to keep my word. And, well, of course, it's a
+great escape for me.
+
+"Why? Was the prospect of marrying me so awful?"
+
+"The prospect of marrying a man who would rather lose a five-pound fish
+than marry me--was awful."
+
+Pritchard stopped rowing, and his laughter went abroad over the quiet
+lake until presently Gay's forehead smoothed and, after a prelude of
+dimples, she joined gayly in.
+
+When Pritchard could speak, he said:
+
+"You don't really think that, do you?"
+
+"I don't know what I think," said Gay. "I'm just horrid and cross and
+spoiled. Don't let's talk about it any more."
+
+"But I said," said he, "I said 'As a bet, no; but as a gift'--oh, with
+what rapture and delight!"
+
+"Do you mean that?" She looked him in the face with level eyes.
+
+Once more he stopped rowing.
+
+"I love you," he said, "with my whole heart and soul."
+
+"Don't," said Gay, "don't spoil a day that, for all its ups and downs,
+has been a good day, a day that, on the whole, I've loved--and let's
+hurry, please, because I stood in the water and it was icy."
+
+After that Pritchard rowed with heroic force and determination; he
+lacked, however, the knack which overlapping oar handles demand, and at
+every fifteenth or sixteenth stroke knocked a piece of "bark" from his
+knuckles.
+
+Smarting with pain, he smiled gently at her from time to time.
+
+"Will you guide me to-morrow?"
+
+"To-morrow," she said, "there will be enough real guides to go around."
+
+"You really are, aren't you?" he said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Angry with me."
+
+"Oh, no--I think--that what you said--what you said--was a foolish thing
+to say. If I came to you with my sisters Lee and Phyllis, you wouldn't
+know which of the three I was, and yet--you said--you said----"
+
+"It isn't a question of words--it's a question of feeling. Do you really
+think I shouldn't know you from your sisters?"
+
+"I am sure of it," said Gay.
+
+"But if you weren't?"
+
+"Then I should still think that you had tried to be foolish but I
+shouldn't be angry."
+
+"How," said Pritchard, his eyes twinkling, "shall I convince the girl I
+love--that I know her by sight?"
+
+Gay laughed. The idea seemed rather comical to her.
+
+"To-night," she said, "when you have dined, walk down to the dock alone.
+One of us three will come to you and say: 'Too bad we didn't have better
+luck.' And you won't know if she's Lee or Phyllis or me."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pritchard smoked upon the dock in the light of an arc-lamp. A vision,
+smiling and rosy, swept out of the darkness, and said:
+
+"Too bad we didn't have better luck!"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Pritchard, "you're not Miss Gay, but I haven't
+had the pleasure of being presented to Miss Lee or Miss Phyllis."
+
+The vision chuckled and beat a swift, giggling retreat to a dark spot
+among the pines, where other giggles awaited her.
+
+A second vision came.
+
+"Too bad we didn't have better luck!"
+
+Pritchard smiled gravely into the vision's eyes, and said in so low a
+voice that only she could hear:
+
+"Bad luck? I have learned to love you with all my heart and soul."
+
+Silence. An answering whisper.
+
+"How did you know me?"
+
+"How? Because my heart says here is the only girl in all the world--see
+how different, how more beautiful and gentle she is than all other
+girls."
+
+"But I'm not Gay--I'm Phyllis."
+
+"If you are Phyllis," he whispered, "then you never were Gay."
+
+She laughed softly.
+
+"I _am_ Gay."
+
+"Why tell me? I know. Am I forgiven?"
+
+"There is nothing," she said swiftly, "to forgive," and she fled
+swiftly.
+
+To her sisters waiting among the pines she gave explanation.
+
+"Of course, he knew me."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Why, he said there couldn't be any doubt; he said I was so very much
+better-looking than any sister of mine could possibly be."
+
+Forthwith Lee pinioned Gay's arms and Phyllis pulled her ears for her.
+
+Mr. Pritchard paced the dock, offering rings of Cuban incense to the
+stars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From Play House came the sounds which men make when they play cards and
+do not care whether they win or lose.
+
+Maud was in her office, adding a column of figures which the grocer had
+sent in. The triplets, linked arm in arm, joined her. Arthur came, and
+Eve and Mary.
+
+They agreed that they were very tired and ready for bed.
+
+"It's going to be a success, anyway," said Mary. "That seems certain."
+
+"We must have the plumber up," said Eve; "the laundry boiler has sprung
+a leak. Who's that in your pocket, Arthur?"
+
+"Uncas. He came in exhausted after a long day in the woods. Something
+unusual happened to him. I know, because he tried so very hard to tell
+me all about it just before he went to sleep, and of course he couldn't
+quite make me understand. I think he was trying to warn me of
+something--trying to tell me to keep my eyes peeled."
+
+The family laughed. Arthur was always so absurd about his pets. All
+laughed except Gay. She, in a dark corner, like the rose in the poem,
+blushed unseen.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+When their week was up, Mr. Langham's guests, Messrs. O'Malley, Alston,
+and Cox, felt obliged to go where income called them. Renier, however,
+who had only been at work a year, decided that he did not like his job,
+and would try for another in the fall. Lee delivered herself of the
+stern opinion that a rolling stone gathers no moss, and Renier answered
+that his late uncle had been a fair-to-middling moss gatherer, and that
+to have more than one such in a given family was a sign of low tastes.
+"I have a little money of my own," he said darkly, "and, what's more, I
+have a little hunch." To his face Lee upbraided him for his lack of
+ambition and his lack of elegance, but behind his back she smiled
+secretly. She was well pleased with herself. It had only taken him three
+days to get so that he knew her when he saw her, and for a young man of
+average intellect and eyesight that was almost a record.
+
+The triplets were not only as like as three lovely vases cast in the
+same mould but it amused them to dress alike, without so much as the
+differentiation of a ribbon, and to imitate each other's little tricks
+of speech and gesture. It was even possible for them to fool their own
+brother at times when he happened to be a little absent-minded.
+
+Every day Renier fished for many hours, and always the guide who handled
+his boat and showed him where to throw his flies was Lee.
+
+"They're only children," said Mary, "and I think they're getting
+altogether too chummy."
+
+Arthur did not answer, and for the very good reason that Mary's words
+were not addressed to him, nor were they addressed to Maud or Eve.
+Indeed, at the moment, these three were sound asleep in their beds. It
+was to that plumper and earlier bird, Mr. Samuel Langham, that Mary had
+spoken. The end of a kitchen table, set with blue-and-white dishes and
+cups that steamed, fragrantly separated them. They had formed a habit of
+breakfasting together in the kitchen, and it had not taken Mary long to
+discover that Sam Langham's good judgment was not confined to eatables
+and drinkables. She consulted him about all sorts of things. She felt as
+if she had known him (and trusted him) all her life.
+
+"Renier," he said, "is one of the few really eligible young men I know.
+That is why I asked him up here. I don't mean that my intention was
+match-making, but when I saw your picture in the advertisement, I said
+to myself: 'The Inn is no place for attractive scalawags. Any man that
+goes there on my invitation must be sound, morally and financially.'
+Young Renier is as innocent of anything evil as Miss Lee herself. If
+they take a fancy to each other--of course it's none of my business,
+but, my dear Miss Darling--why not?"
+
+"Coffee?"
+
+"Thanks."
+
+"An egg?"
+
+"Please."
+
+Mary was very tactful. She never said: "_Some more_ coffee?" She never
+said: "_Another_ egg?"
+
+"Some people," said Mr. Langham, smiling happily, "might say that _we_
+were getting too chummy."
+
+"Suppose," said Mary, "that somebody did say just that?"
+
+"I should reply," said Mr. Langham thoughtfully, "that of the few really
+eligible men that I know, I myself am, on the whole, the most eligible."
+
+Mary laughed.
+
+"Construe," she said.
+
+"In the first place," he continued, "and naming my qualifications in the
+order of their importance, I don't ever remember to have spoken a cross
+word to anybody; secondly, unless I have paved a primrose path to
+ultimate indigestion and gout, there is nothing in my past life to
+warrant mention. To be more explicit, I am not in a position to be
+troubled by--er--'old agitations of myrtle and roses'; third, something
+tells me that in a time of supreme need it would be possible for me to
+go to work; and, fourth, I have plenty of money--really plenty of
+money."
+
+Mary smiled almost tenderly.
+
+"I can't help feeling," she said, "that I, too, am a safe proposition. I
+am twenty-nine. My wild oats have never sprouted. I think we may
+conclude that they were never sown. The Inn was my idea--mostly, though
+I say it that shouldn't. And The Inn is going to be a success. We could
+fill every room we've got five times--at our own prices."
+
+"I pronounce your bill of health sound," said Mr. Langham. "Let us
+continue to be chummy."
+
+"Coffee?"
+
+"Thanks."
+
+Whatever chance there may have been for Gay and Pritchard to get "too
+chummy"--and no one will deny that they had made an excellent start--was
+promptly knocked in the head by Arthur. It so happened that, in a
+desperately unguarded moment, when Arthur happened to be present,
+Pritchard mentioned that he had spent a whole winter in the city of
+Peking. The name startled Arthur as might the apparition of a ghost.
+
+"Which winter?" he asked. "I mean, what year?"
+
+Pritchard said what year, and added, "Why do you ask?"
+
+Arthur had not meant to ask. He began a long blush, seeing which Gay
+turned swift heels and escaped upon a suddenly ejaculated pretext.
+
+"Why," said Arthur lamely, "I knew some people who were in Peking that
+winter--that's all."
+
+"Then," said Pritchard, "we have mutual friends. I knew every foreigner
+in Peking. There weren't many."
+
+Although Arthur had gotten the better of his blush, he felt that
+Pritchard was eying him rather narrowly.
+
+"They," said Arthur, "were a Mr. and Mrs. Waring."
+
+"I hope," said Pritchard, "that _he_ wasn't a friend of yours."
+
+"He was not," said Arthur, "but she was. I was very fond of her."
+
+"Nobody," said Pritchard, "could help being fond of her. But Waring was
+an old brute. One hated him. He wouldn't let her call her soul her own.
+He was always snubbing her. We used to call her the 'girl with the dry
+eyes.'"
+
+"Why?" asked Arthur.
+
+"It's a Chinese idea," said Pritchard. "Every woman is supposed to have
+just so many tears to shed. When these are all gone, why, then, no
+matter what sorrows come to her, she has no way of relieving them."
+
+Arthur could not conceal his agitation. And Pritchard looked away. He
+wished to escape. He thought that he could be happier with Gay than with
+her brother. But Arthur, agitation or no agitation, was determined to
+find out all that the young Englishman could tell him about the Warings.
+He began to ask innumerable questions: "What sort of a house did they
+live in?" "How do Christians amuse themselves in the Chinese capital?"
+"Did Mrs. Waring ride?" "What were some of her friends like?" etc., etc.
+There was no escaping him. He fastened himself to Pritchard as a
+drowning man to a straw. And his appetite for Peking news became
+insatiable. Pritchard surrendered gracefully. He went with Arthur on
+canoe trips and mountain climbs; at night he smoked with him in the open
+camp. And, in the end, Arthur gave him his whole confidence; so that,
+much as Pritchard wished to climb mountains and go on canoe trips with
+Gay, he was touched, interested, and gratified, and then all at once he
+found himself liking Arthur as much as any man he had ever known.
+
+"There is something wonderfully fine about your brother," he said to
+Gay. "At first I thought he was a queer stick, with his pets and his
+secret haunts in the woods, and his unutterable contempt for anything
+mean or worldly. We ought to dress him up in proof armor and send him
+forth upon the quest of some grail or other."
+
+"Grails," said Gay, "and auks are extinct."
+
+"Grails extinct!" exclaimed Pritchard. He was horrified.
+
+"Why, my dear Miss Gay, if ever the world offered opportunities to
+belted knights without fear and without reproach, it's now."
+
+"I suppose," said she, "that Arthur has told you all about his--his
+mix-up."
+
+Pritchard nodded gravely.
+
+"Is that the quest he ought to ride on?"
+
+"No--it won't do for Arthur. He might be accused of self-interest. That
+should be a matter to be redressed by a brother knight."
+
+"Or a divorce court."
+
+"Miss Gay!"
+
+"I don't think it's nice for one's brother to be in love with a married
+woman."
+
+"It isn't," said Pritchard gravely, "for him. It's hell."
+
+"_We_," said Gay, "never knew her."
+
+"She's not much older than you," said Pritchard. "If I'd never seen you,
+I'd say that she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. But she's gentler
+and meeker than even you'd be in her boots. She isn't self-reliant and
+able."
+
+"You talk as if you'd been in love with her yourself."
+
+"I? I thought I was talking as if I was in love with you."
+
+"Looks like it, don't it?" said she. "Spending all your time with a
+girl's brother."
+
+"Not doing what you most want to do," said Pritchard, "is sometimes
+thought knightly."
+
+"Do you know," she said critically, "sometimes I think you really like
+me a lot. And sometimes I think that I really like you. The funny thing
+is that it never seems to happen to both of us at the same time. There's
+Arthur looking for you. Do me a favor--shake him and come for a tramp
+with me."
+
+"I can't," said Pritchard simply. "I've promised. But to-morrow----"
+
+"_Certainly not_," said she.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Warm weather and the real opening of the season arrived at the same
+time. The Camp hummed with the activities and the voices of people. And
+it became possible for the Darlings to withdraw a little into their
+shells and lead more of a family life. As Maud said:
+
+"When there were more proprietors than guests, we simply had to sail in
+and give the guests a good time. But now that the business is in full
+blast, we mustn't be amateurs any more."
+
+Langham, Renier, and the future Earl of Merrivale remained, of course,
+upon their well-established footing of companionship, but the Darlings
+began to play their parts of innkeepers with the utmost seriousness and
+to fight shy of any social advances from the ranks of their guests.
+
+Indeed, for the real heads of the family, Mary, Maud, and Eve, there was
+serious work to be done. For, to keep thirty or forty exigent and
+extravagant people well fed, well laundered, well served, and well
+amused is no frisky skirmish but a morning-to-night battle, a constant
+looking ahead, a steady drain upon the patience and invention.
+
+In Sam Langham Mary found an invaluable ally. He knew how to live, and
+could guess to a nicety the "inner man" of another. Nor did he stop at
+advice. Being a celebrated _bon viveur_ he went subtly among the guests
+and praised the machinery of whose completed product they were the
+consumers and the beneficiaries. He knew of no place, he confided, up
+and down the whole world, where, for a sum of money, you got exactly
+what you wanted without asking for it.
+
+"Take me for an example," he would say. "I have never before been able
+to get along without my valet. Here he would be a superfluity. I am
+'done,' you may say, better than I have ever been able to do myself. And
+I know what I'm talking about. What! You think the prices are really
+rather high. Think what you are getting, man--think!"
+
+Among the new guests was a young man from Boston by the name of Herring.
+He had written that he was convalescing from typhoid fever and that his
+doctor had prescribed Adirondack air.
+
+Renier knew Herring slightly and vouched for him.
+
+"They're good people," he said, "his branch of the Herring family--the
+'red Herrings' they are called locally--if we may speak of Boston as a
+'locality'--he's the reddest of them and the most showy. If there's
+anything he hasn't tried, he has to try it. He isn't good at things. But
+he does them. He's the fellow that went to the Barren Lands with a
+niblick. What, you never heard of that stunt? He was playing in foursome
+at Myopia. He got bunkered. He hit the sand a prodigious blow and the
+ball never moved. His partner said: 'Never mind, Syd, you hit hard
+enough to kill a musk-ox.'
+
+"'Did I?' said Herring, much interested, 'but I never heard of killing a
+musk-ox with a niblick. Has it ever been done? Are there any authorities
+one might consult?'
+
+"His partner assured him that 'it' had never been done. Herring said
+that was enough for him. The charm of Herring is that he never smiles;
+he's deadly serious--or pretends to be. When they had holed out at the
+eighteenth, Herring took his niblick and said: 'Well, so long. I'm off
+to the Barren Lands.'
+
+"They bet him there and then that he would neither go to the Barren
+Lands nor kill a musk-ox when he got there. He took their bets, which
+were large. And he went to the Barren Lands, armed only with his niblick
+and a camera. But he didn't kill a musk-ox. He said they came right up
+to be photographed, and he hadn't the heart to strike. He brought back
+plenty enough pictures to prove where he'd been, but no musk-ox. He
+aimed at one tentatively but at the last moment held his hand. 'He
+remembered suddenly,' he said, 'that he had never killed anything, and
+didn't propose to begin.' So he came home and paid one bet and pocketed
+the other. He can't shoot; he can't fish; he can't row. He's a perfect
+dub, but he's got the soul of a Columbus."
+
+"Something tells me," said Pritchard, "that I shall like him."
+
+Herring, having arrived and registered and been shown his rooms, was not
+thereafter seen to speak to anybody for two whole days. As a matter of
+fact, though, he held some conversation with Renier, whom he had met
+before.
+
+"It's just Boston," Renier explained. "They're the best people in the
+world--when--well, not when you get to know them but when they get to
+know you. Give him time and he will blossom."
+
+"He looks like a blossom already," said Lee. "He looks at a little
+distance like a gigantic plant of scarlet salvia, or a small maple-tree
+in October."
+
+Upon the third day Mr. Herring came out of his shell, as had been
+prophesied. He went about asking guests and guides, with almost
+plaintive seriousness, questions which they were unable to answer. He
+began to make friends with Pritchard and Langham. He solemnly presented
+Arthur with a baseball that had figured in a Yale-Harvard game. Then he
+got himself introduced to Lee.
+
+"You guide, don't you?" he said.
+
+"I have guided," she said, "but I don't. It was only in the beginning of
+things when there weren't enough real guides to go around. But, surely
+you don't need a guide. You've been to the Barren Lands and all sorts of
+wild places. You ought to be a first-class woodsman."
+
+"I thought I'd like to go fishing to-morrow," he said. "It's very
+disappointing. I've looked forward all my life to being guided by a
+young girl, and when I saw you, I said, if this isn't she, this is her
+living image."
+
+"You shall have Bullard," said Lee. "He knows all the best places."
+
+Herring complained to Arthur. "Your sisters," he said, "are said to be
+the best guides in the Adirondacks, but they won't take me out. How is
+a fellow to convalesce from typhoid if people aren't unfailingly kind to
+him?"
+
+Arthur laughed, and said that he didn't know.
+
+"Let me guide you," he offered.
+
+"No," said Herring, "it isn't that I want to be guided. It's that I want
+the experience of being guided by a girl. I want to lean back and be
+rowed."
+
+Herring walked in the woods and came upon Phyllis's garden, with Phyllis
+in the midst of it.
+
+"Halloo again!" he said.
+
+Now it so happened that he had never seen Phyllis before.
+
+She straightened from a frame of baby lettuce and smiled. She loved
+bright colors, and his flaming hair was becoming to her garden.
+
+"Halloo again!" she said.
+
+"Have you changed your mind?" he asked.
+
+She sparred for time and enlightenment and said:
+
+"It's against all the rules."
+
+"We could," said he, "start so early that nobody would know. I have
+often gotten up at five."
+
+"So have I," said Phyllis wistfully.
+
+"We could be back before breakfast."
+
+Phyllis appeared to think the matter over.
+
+"Of course," he said, "you said you wouldn't. But if girls didn't change
+their minds, they wouldn't be girls."
+
+"That," said Phyllis, "is perfectly true."
+
+To herself she said:
+
+"He's asked Lee or Gay to guide him, and thinks he's asked me."
+
+Now, Phyllis was not good with oars or fishing-tackle, but she liked
+Herring's hair and the fact that he never smiled. Furthermore, she
+believed that, if the worst came to the worst, she could find some of
+the places where people sometimes took trout.
+
+"I have never," said Herring, "been guided by a young girl."
+
+"What, never!" exclaimed Phyllis.
+
+"Never," he said. "And I am sure that it would work wonders for me."
+
+"Such as?"
+
+"It might lead me to take an interest in gardening. I have always hoped
+that I should some day."
+
+"People," thought Phyllis, "interested in gardening are rare--especially
+beautiful young gentlemen with flaming hair. Here is my chance to
+slaughter two birds with one stone."
+
+"You'll swear not to tell?" she exhorted.
+
+"Yes," he said, "but not here. Soon. When I am alone." He did not smile.
+
+"Then," she said, "be at the float at five-thirty sharp."
+
+That night she sought out Lee and Gay.
+
+"Such a joke," she said. "I've promised to guide Mr. Herring--to-morrow
+at five-thirty, but he thinks that it's one of you two who has promised.
+Now, as I don't row or fish, one of you will have to take my place for
+the credit of the family."
+
+But her sisters were laughing in their sleeves.
+
+"My dear girl," said Gay, "why the dickens didn't you tell us sooner? We
+also have made positive engagements at five-thirty to-morrow morning."
+
+"What engagements?" exclaimed Phyllis.
+
+Gay leaned close and whispered confidentially.
+
+"We've made positive engagements," she said, "to sleep till breakfast
+time."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+In an athletic generation Phyllis was an anachronism. She was the sort
+of girl one's great-grandmother was, only better-looking--one's
+great-grandmother, if there is any truth in oil and canvas, having been
+neatly and roundly turned out of a peg of wood. Phyllis played no game
+well, unless gardening is a game. She liked to embroider and to write
+long letters in a wonderfully neat hand. She disliked intensely the
+roaring of firearms and the diabolic flopping of fresh-caught fish. She
+was one of those people who never look at a sunset or a moonrise or a
+flower without actually seeing them, and yet, withal, her sisters Lee
+and Gay looked upon her with a certain awe and respect. She was so
+strong in the wrists and fingers that she could hold them when they were
+rambunctious. And she was only afraid of things that aren't in the least
+dangerous. "No," they said, "she can't fish and shoot and row and play
+tennis and dive and swim under water, but she's the best dancer in the
+family--probably in the world--and the best sport."
+
+Phyllis was, in truth, a good sport, or else she was more attracted by
+Mr. Herring's _Salvia-splendens_ hair than she would have cared to
+admit. Whatever the cause, she met him at the float the next morning at
+five-thirty, prepared to guide him or perish in the attempt. She wore a
+short blue skirt and a long white sweater of Shetland wool. It weighed
+about an ounce. She wore white tennis shoes and an immense pair of
+well-oiled gardening gloves. At least she would put off blistering her
+hands as long as possible.
+
+Phyllis, to be exact, was five minutes early for her appointment. This
+gave her time to get a boat into the water without displaying
+awkwardness to any one but herself--also, to slip the oars over the
+thole-pins and to accustom herself to the idea of handling them. She had
+taken coaching the night before from Lee and Gay, sitting on a bearskin
+rug in front of the fire, and swaying rhythmically forward and back.
+
+As Herring was no fisherman, her sisters advised her to row very slowly.
+"Tell him," they said, "that a boat rushing through water alarms fish
+more than anything in the world."
+
+She told him when he was seated in the stern of the boat facing her.
+
+"You mustn't mind going very slow," she said. "The fish in this part of
+the Adirondacks are noted for their sensitiveness in general and their
+acute sense of hearing in particular. Why, if I were to row as fast as I
+can"--there must have been a twinkle in her eyes--"trout miles away
+would be frightened out of their skins," and she added mentally, "and I
+should upset this horribly wabbly boat into the bargain."
+
+They proceeded at a snail's pace, Phyllis dabbing the water gingerly
+with her oars, with something of that caution and repulsion with which
+one turns over a dead snake with a stick--to see if it is dead.
+
+The grips of guide-boat oars overlap. And your hands follow rather than
+accompany each other from catch to finish, and from finish to catch. If
+you are careless, or not to the stroke born or trained, you occasionally
+knock little chunks of skin and flesh from your knuckles.
+
+Herring watched Phyllis's gentle and restrained efforts with inscrutable
+eyes.
+
+"I never could understand," he said, "how you fellows manage to row at
+all with that sort of an outfit. At Harvard they only give you one oar
+and let you take both hands to it, and then you can't row. At least, I
+couldn't. They put me right out of the boat. They said I caught crabs.
+As a matter of fact, I didn't. All I did was to sit there, and every now
+and then the handle of my oar banged me across the solar plexus."
+
+"We're not going far, you know," said Phyllis (and she mastered the
+desire to laugh). "Hadn't you--ah--um--better put your rod together?"
+
+"Oh, I can do that!" said Herring. "You begin with the big piece and you
+stick the next-sized piece into that, and so on. And I know how to put
+the reel on, because the man in the store showed me, and I know how to
+run the line through the rings."
+
+"Well," said Phyllis, "that's more than half the battle."
+
+"And," Herring continued, "he showed me how to tie on the
+what-you-may-call-it and the flies."
+
+"Good!" said Phyllis.
+
+"And, of course," he concluded, "I've forgotten."
+
+Now, Phyllis had been shown how to tie flies to a leader only the night
+before, and she, also, had forgotten.
+
+"There are," she said, "a great many fetiches among anglers. Among them
+are knots. Now, in my experience, almost any knot that will stand will
+do. The important thing is to choose the right flies."
+
+As to this, she had also received instruction, but with better results,
+since it was an entirely feminine affair of colored silks and feathers.
+
+"I will tell you which flies to use," she said.
+
+"And," said he, "you will also have to show me how to cast."
+
+"What!" she exclaimed, and stopped rowing, "You don't know how to cast?"
+
+"No," he said, "I don't. I'm a dub. Didn't you know that?"
+
+"But," she protested, "I can't teach you in a morning"--and she added
+mentally--"or in a whole lifetime, for that matter."
+
+It was not more than a mile across the mouth of a deep bay to the brook
+in which they had elected to fish. With no wind to object, the most
+dabbily propelled guide boat travels with considerable speed, and before
+Herring had managed to tie the flies which Phyllis had selected to his
+leader (with any kind of a knot) they were among the snaggy shallows of
+the brook's mouth.
+
+The brook was known locally as Swamp Brook, its shores for a mile or
+more being boggy and treacherous. Fishermen who liked to land
+occasionally and cast from terra firma avoided it. Phyllis had selected
+it solely because it was the nearest brook to the camp which contained
+trout. If she had remembered how full it was of snags, and how easily
+guide boats are turned turtle, she would have selected some other brook,
+even, if necessary, at the "Back of beyond." It had been easy enough to
+propel the boat across the open waters of the lake, but to guide it
+clear of snags and around right-angle bends, especially when the genius
+of rowing demands that eyes look astern rather than ahead, was beyond
+her powers. The boat ran into snags, poked its nose into boggy banks,
+turned half over, righted, rushed on, and stopped again with rude bumps.
+
+Herring, that fatalistic young Bostonian, began to take an interest in
+his fate. His flies trailed in the water behind him. His eyes never left
+Phyllis's face. His handsome mouth was as near to smiling as it ever
+got.
+
+"Do you," he said presently, "swim as well as you row?"
+
+She stopped rowing; she laughed right out.
+
+"Just about," she said.
+
+"Good," he said seriously, "because I'm a dub at it, and in case of an
+upset, I look to you."
+
+"The truth," said Phyllis, "is that there's no place to swim to. It's
+all swamp in here."
+
+"True," said Herring; "we would have to cling to the boat and call upon
+Heaven to aid us."
+
+One of Herring's flies, trailing in the water, proved, at this moment,
+overwhelmingly attractive to a young and unsophisticated trout.
+
+Herring shouted with the triumph of a schoolboy, "I've got one," and
+sprang to his feet.
+
+"Please sit down!" said Phyllis. "We almost went that time."
+
+"So we did," said Herring.
+
+He sat down, and they almost "went" again.
+
+"Now," said Phyllis, "play him."
+
+"Play him?" said Herring. "Watch me." And he began to pull strongly upon
+the fish.
+
+The fish was young and weak. Herring's tackle was new and strong. The
+fish dangled in mid-air over the middle of the boat.
+
+"Sorry," said Herring, "I can't reach him. Take him off, please."
+
+It has been said that Phyllis was a good sport. If there was one thing
+she hated and feared more than another, it was a live fish. She reached
+forward; her gloved hand almost closed upon it; it gave a convulsive
+flop; Phyllis squeaked like a mouse, threw her weight to one side, and
+the boat quietly upset.
+
+The sportsmen came to the surface streaming.
+
+"I can touch bottom," said Herring politely; "can you?"
+
+"Yes," she said, "but my feet are sinking into it--" She tore them loose
+and swam. Herring did likewise. And they clung to the boat.
+
+"I hope you'll forgive me," said Phyllis. "I never rowed a boat before
+and I never could stand live fish."
+
+"It was my fault," said Herring. "Something told me to lean the opposite
+from the way you leaned. But it told me too late. The truth is I don't
+know how to behave in a boat. Well, you are still guide. It's up to
+you."
+
+"What is up to me?"
+
+"A plan of some sort," said he, "to get us out of this."
+
+"Oh, no," she said, "it's up to you."
+
+"My plan," he said, "would be to get back into the boat and row home. It
+seems feasible, and even easy. But appearances are deceptive. I think
+I'd rather walk. What has happened here might happen out on the middle
+of the lake."
+
+"What you don't realize," said Phyllis, "is that we're in the midst of
+an impassable swamp."
+
+"Impassable?"
+
+"Well, no one's ever crossed it except in winter."
+
+"What--no one!"
+
+He was immensely interested.
+
+"Do you know," he went on confidentially, "the only things that I'm good
+at are things for which there are no precedents--things that nobody has
+ever done before. That's why I'm so fond of doing unusual things. Now,
+you say that this swamp has never been crossed? Enough said. You and I
+will cross it. We _will_ do it. Are you game?"
+
+"It seems," said Phyllis, "merely a question of when and where we drown.
+So I'm game. Your teeth are chattering."
+
+"Thank you," said Herring. "But no harm will come to them. They are very
+strong."
+
+"I hope," said Phyllis, "that when I come out of the water you won't
+look at me. I shall be a sight."
+
+"A comrade in trouble," said Herring, "is never a sight."
+
+"I am so ashamed," said Phyllis.
+
+"What of?"
+
+"Of being such a fool."
+
+"You're a good sport," said Herring. "That's what you are."
+
+By dint of violent kicking and paddling with their free hands they
+managed to propel the guide boat from the centre of the brook to a
+firm-looking clump of reeds and alder roots which formed a tiny
+peninsula from that shore which was toward The Camp. Covered with slime
+and mud they dragged themselves out of the water and stood balancing
+upon the alder roots to recover their breath.
+
+"We must each take an oar," said Herring. "We can make little bridges
+with them. And we must keep working hard so as to get warm. We shall
+live to write a brochure about this: 'From Clump to Clump, or Mudfoots
+in the Adirondacks.'"
+
+Between that clump on which they had found a footing and the next was
+ten feet of water.
+
+Herring crossed seven feet of it with one heavy jump, fell on his face,
+caught two handfuls of viburnum stems, and once more dragged himself out
+of water.
+
+"Now then," he called, "float the oars over to me." And when Phyllis had
+done this: "Now you come. The main thing in crossing swamps is to keep
+flat instead of up and down. Jump for it--fall forward--and I'll get
+your hands!"
+
+Once more they stood side by side precariously balancing.
+
+"The moment," said Herring, "that you begin to feel bored, tell me."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"So that I can encourage you. I will tell you that you are doing
+something that has never been done before. And that will make you feel
+fine and dandy. What we are doing is just as hard as finding the North
+Pole, only there isn't going to be so much of it. Now then, in
+negotiating this next sheet of water----"
+
+And so they proceeded until the sun was high in the heavens and until it
+was low.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+To attempt the dangerous passage of a swamp when they might have
+returned to camp in the guide boat was undoubtedly a most imbecile
+decision. And if Phyllis had not been thoroughly flustered by the upset,
+which was all her fault, she never would have consented to it. As for
+Herring's voice in the matter, it was that which the young man always
+gave when there was a question of adventure. He didn't get around
+mountains by the valley road. He climbed over them. He had not in his
+whole being a suspicion of what is dangerous. He had never been afraid
+of anything. He probably never would be. He would have enjoyed leading
+half a dozen forlorn hopes every morning before breakfast.
+
+"We were idiots," said Phyllis, "to leave the boat."
+
+"We can't go back to it now," said Herring. "We don't know the way."
+
+"Your voice sounds as if you were glad of it."
+
+"I am. I was dreadfully afraid you'd decide against crossing this
+swamp. I'd set my heart on it."
+
+"It isn't I," said Phyllis, "that's against our crossing this swamp.
+It's the swamp."
+
+"The main thing," said Herring, with satisfaction (physically he was
+almost exhausted), "is that here we are safe and sound. We don't know
+where 'here' is, but it's with us, it won't run away. When we've rested
+we shall go on, taking 'here' with us. Wherever we go is 'here.' Think
+of that!"
+
+"I wish I could think of something else," said Phyllis, "but I can't.
+I'm almost dead."
+
+"You are doing something that no girl has ever done before, not even
+your sisters, those princesses of fortune. Years from now, when you
+begin, 'Once when I happened to be crossing the Swamp with a young
+fellow named Herring--' they will have to sit silent and listen."
+
+"If you weren't so cheerful," said Phyllis, "I should have begun to cry
+an hour ago. Do you really think this is fun?"
+
+"Do I think it's fun? To be in a scrape--not to know when or how we are
+going to get out of it? You bet I think it's fun."
+
+"People have died," said Phyllis, "having just this sort of fun. Suppose
+we can't get out?"
+
+"You mean to-day? Perhaps we can't. Perhaps not to-morrow. Perhaps we
+shall have to learn how to live in a swamp. A month of the life we've
+led for the last few hours might turn us into amphibians. That would be
+intensely novel and interesting. But, of course, when winter comes and
+the place freezes over we can march right out and take up our orthodox
+lives where we left off. Listen!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I think I hear webs growing between my fingers and toes."
+
+Phyllis laughed so that the partially dried mud on her face cracked.
+
+"What," she said, "are we going to eat this side of winter? What are we
+going to eat now?"
+
+His face expressed immense concern.
+
+"What? You are hungry? Allow me!"
+
+He produced from his inside pocket a very large cake of sweet chocolate,
+wrapped in several thicknesses of oiled silk.
+
+"My one contribution," he said, "to the science of woodcraft."
+
+Phyllis ate and was refreshed. Afterward she washed all the mud from her
+face. Herring watched the progress of the ablution with much interest.
+
+"Wonderful!" he said presently.
+
+"What is wonderful?" she asked, not without anticipation of a
+compliment.
+
+"Wonderful to find that something which is generally accepted as
+true--is true. To see it proved before your eyes."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean," he said, "that I never before actually saw a girl wash her
+face. I've seen 'em when they said they were going to. I've seen 'em
+when they said they just had. But now I know."
+
+"If you weren't quite mad," said Phyllis, "you'd be very exasperating.
+Here am I, frightened half to death, cold and miserable, and dreadfully
+worried to think how worried my family must be, and there are you,
+almost too tired to stand, actually delighted with yourself, because
+you're in trouble and because for the first time in your life you've
+seen a girl wash her face. Can't you be serious about anything?"
+
+"Not about a half-drowned girl taking the trouble to wash her face," he
+said.
+
+"You," said she, "would look much better if you washed yours."
+
+"But," he said, "we'll be covered with mud again before we've gone fifty
+yards."
+
+"Because you are going into a coal mine to-morrow," said Phyllis, "is
+no reason why you shouldn't be clean to-day."
+
+"True," said Herring, and he washed his face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At breakfast that morning Pritchard received the following cablegram:
+
+     Come home and shake hands. I'm off. M.
+
+Greatly moved, he carried it to Gay, and without comment put it in her
+hand.
+
+"Who is M?" she asked.
+
+"My uncle, the Earl of Merrivale."
+
+"What does _I'm off_ mean?"
+
+"It means," said Pritchard, "that they've given him up, and he wants to
+make friends. He never liked my father or me."
+
+"It means," said Gay generously, "that you are going away?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "at once. But it means more. It means that I've got to
+find out if I'm--to come back some time?"
+
+"Of course, you are to come back," she said.
+
+Words rose swiftly to Pritchard's lips and came no further. Indeed, he
+appeared to swallow them.
+
+"And I'm glad you are going to make friends with your uncle," said Gay.
+
+"There'll be such lots of young men here when the season opens," said
+Pritchard.
+
+"Judging by applications," said Gay, "we shall be swamped with gentlemen
+of all ages."
+
+Pritchard's melancholy only deepened. "Will you come as far as Carrytown
+in the _Streak_?" he asked.
+
+She nodded, and said she would because she had some shopping to do.
+
+During that short, exhilarating rush across the lake, and afterward
+walking up and down on the board platform by the side of the waiting
+train, he tried his best to ring a little sentiment out of her, but
+failed utterly.
+
+The locomotive whistled, and the conductor came out of the village
+drug-store, staggering slightly.
+
+"I've left all my dry-fly tackle," said Pritchard. "Will _you_ take care
+of it for me?"
+
+"With pleasure," said Gay.
+
+"I'd like you to use it. It's a lovely rod to throw line."
+
+"All aboard!"
+
+"I'd like to bring you out some rods and things. May I?"
+
+"You bet you may!" exclaimed Gay.
+
+Pritchard sighed. The train creaked, jolted, moved forward, stopped,
+jerked, and moved forward again. Pritchard waited until the rear steps
+of the rear car were about to pass.
+
+"Good-by, Miss Gay!"
+
+They shook hands firmly, and Pritchard swung himself onto the moving
+train. Gay, walking rapidly and presently breaking into a trot,
+accompanied him as far as the end of the platform. She wanted to say
+something that would please him very much without encouraging him too
+much.
+
+"Looks as if I was after you!" she said.
+
+Pritchard's whole soul was in his eyes. And there was a large lump in
+his throat. Suddenly Gay reached the end of the long platform and
+stopped running. The train was now going quite fast for an Adirondack
+train. The distance between them widened rapidly.
+
+"Wish you weren't going," called Gay.
+
+And she saw Pritchard reach suddenly upward and pull the rope by which
+trains are stopped in emergencies. While the train was stopping and the
+train hands were trying to find out who had stopped it and why,
+Pritchard calmly alighted, and returned to where Gay was standing.
+
+"I just had to look at you once more--close," he said; "you never can
+tell what will happen in this world. I may never see you again, and the
+thought is killing me. Think of that once in a while, please."
+
+He bent swiftly, caught her hand in his, kissed it, and was gone. Or, if
+not exactly gone, she saw him no more, because of suddenly blinding
+tears.
+
+When she reached The Camp, Arthur was at the float to meet her.
+
+"Phyllis and Herring haven't come back," he said. "Lee says they went
+fishing. Do you know where they went?"
+
+"I don't. And they ought to have been back hours ago."
+
+"Yes," said Arthur, "and we're all starting out to look for them. Care
+to come with me?"
+
+"Yes," she said; "I've got to do _something_."
+
+Something in her voice took his mind from the more imminent matter.
+
+"What's wrong, Gay?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Nothing. Let's start. If Phyl rowed, they must have gone to the nearest
+possible fishing grounds."
+
+At this moment Sam Langham came puffing down from Cook House. He was
+dressed in white flannels and carried a revolver.
+
+"It's to signal with," he explained. "I'm going to try Loon Brook,
+because it's the only brook I know when I see it."
+
+"Bullard's gone to Loon Brook."
+
+"Pshaw--can't I ever be of any use!"
+
+"Good Lord," said Gay, "look!"
+
+There came around the nearest bend a man rowing one guide boat and
+towing another, which was empty. Arthur called to him in a loud, hoarse
+voice:
+
+"Where'd you find that boat?"
+
+"Up Swamp Brook," came the answer.
+
+Arthur and Gay went gray as ashes.
+
+"Who's to tell Mary?" said Arthur presently.
+
+Then Sam Langham spoke.
+
+"If you don't mind," he said, "I think I will."
+
+An hour later the entire male population of The Camp was dragging Swamp
+Brook for what they so dreaded to find.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+It wasn't all discouragement. For now and then it seemed as if the swamp
+was going to have a shore of dry land. At such times Herring would
+exclaim:
+
+"There you see! It had never been done before, and now it's been done,
+and we've done it."
+
+And then it would seem to Phyllis as if a great weight of fear and
+anxiety had been lifted from her.
+
+But the shore of the swamp always turned out to be an illusion. Once
+Herring, firmly situated as he believed, went suddenly through a crust
+of sphagnum moss and was immersed to the arm-pits. For some moments he
+struggled grimly to extricate himself, and only sank the deeper. Then he
+turned to Phyllis a face whimsical in spite of its gravity and pallor,
+and said: "If you have never saved a man's life, now is your chance. I'm
+afraid I can't get out without help."
+
+It was then that her phenomenally strong little hands and wrists stood
+them both in good stead. The arches of her feet against a submerged
+root of white cedar, she so pulled and tugged, and exhorted Herring to
+struggle free, that at last he came out of that pocket quagmire and lay
+exhausted in the ooze at her feet.
+
+He was incased from neck to foot in a smooth coating of brown slime.
+Presently he rolled over on his back and looked up at her.
+
+"There you see!" he said. "You'd never saved a man's life before, and
+now you've done it. Please accept my sincere expressions of envy and
+gratitude-- Why, you're crying!"
+
+She was not only crying, but she was showing symptoms of incipient
+hysteria. "An old-fashioned girl," thought Herring, "like
+Great-grandmother Saltonstall." He raised himself to a sitting position
+just in time to slide an arm around her waist as, the hysteria now well
+under way, she sat down beside him and began to wave her hands up and
+down like a polite baby saying good-by to some one.
+
+"One new thing under the sun after another," thought Herring. "Never had
+arm round hysterical girl's waist before. Got it there now. When you
+need _her_, she takes a good brace and pulls for all she's worth. When
+she needs _you_, she seats herself on six inches of water and yells.
+Just like Great-grandmother Saltonstall." Aloud he kept saying: "That's
+right! Greatest relief in the world! Go to it!" And his arm tightened
+about her with extraordinary tenderness.
+
+Her hysterics ended as suddenly as they had begun. And then she wasted a
+valuable half-hour apologizing for having had them; Herring protesting
+all the while that he had enjoyed them just as much as she had, and that
+they had done him a world of good. And then they had to stop talking
+because their teeth began to chatter so hard that they simply couldn't
+keep on. Herring stuttered something about, "Exercise is what a body
+needs," and they rose to their feet and fought their way through a dense
+grove of arbor-vitæ.
+
+"The stealthy Indian goes through such places without making a sound,"
+said Herring.
+
+"Or getting his moccasins wet," said Phyllis. "Oh!" And she sank to the
+waist.
+
+"Never mind," said Herring, "it will be dark before long. And when we
+have no choice of where to step, maybe we'll have better luck."
+
+"It will _have_ to be dark very soon," said Phyllis, "if we have any
+more of our clothes taken away from us by the brambles."
+
+"That's a new idea!" exclaimed Herring. "Young couple starve to death
+in the woods because modesty forbids them to join their friends in the
+open. The head-line might be: 'Stripped by Brambles,' or 'The Two
+Bares.'"
+
+He was so pleased with his joke that he had to lean against a tree. The
+laughing set him to coughing, and Phyllis beat him methodically between
+the shoulders.
+
+Herring still refused to be serious. In helping Phyllis over the bad
+places, he performed prodigies of misapplied strength and made
+prodigious puns. And he said that never in his life had he been in such
+a delightful scrape.
+
+Once, while they were resting, Phyllis said:
+
+"All you seem to think of is the fun you're having. Most men would be
+thinking about the anxiety they were causing others and about the
+miseries of their companion."
+
+"But," he protested, "you are enjoying yourself too. You don't think you
+are, but you are. It's your philosophy that is wrong. You like to live
+too much in the present. I like to lay by stores of delightful memories
+against rainy days. The worse you feel now, the more you'll enjoy
+remembering how you felt--some evening, soon--your back against soft
+cushions and the soles of your feet toward the fire."
+
+"Ugh!" shuddered Phyllis. "Don't talk about fires. Oh, dear!"
+
+"What's wrong _now_!"
+
+"I'm so stiff I don't think I can take another step. We oughtn't to have
+rested so long."
+
+But she did take another step, and would have fallen heavily if Herring
+had not caught her. A moment later she lost a shoe in the ooze, and
+wasted much precious daylight in vain efforts to locate and recover it.
+
+"Sit down on that root," commanded Herring. And she obeyed. He knelt
+before her, lifted her wet, muddy little stockinged foot and set it on
+his knee.
+
+"What size, please, miss?" he asked, giving an excellent imitation of a
+somewhat officious salesman.
+
+"I don't know; I have them made," said Phyllis wearily, but trying her
+best to smile.
+
+"Something in this style?" suggested Herring. He had secretly removed
+one of his own shoes, and handling it with a kind of comic reverence, as
+if the soggy, muddy thing was a precious work of art, he presented it to
+her attention.
+
+And then Phyllis smiled without even trying and then laughed.
+
+"I said a _shoe_," she said, "not a travelling bath-tub."
+
+But he slipped that great shoe over her little foot, and so bound it to
+her ankle with his handkerchief and necktie that it promised to stay on.
+
+"But you?" she said.
+
+"Luck is with me to-day," said Herring. "Anybody can walk through an
+impassable swamp, but few are given the opportunity to hop. General
+Sherman should have thought of that. It would have showed the
+Confederates just what he thought of them if instead of marching through
+Georgia he had hopped."
+
+And he pursued this new train of thought for some time. He improvised
+words to old tunes, and sang them at the top of his lungs: "As we were
+hopping through Georgia." And last and worst he sang: "There'll be a hop
+time in the old town to-night." And when he had occasion to address
+Phyllis directly, he no longer called her Miss Darling, but "Goody Two
+Shoes." He said that his own name was not Mr. Herring but Mr. Hopper,
+and that he was a famous cotillon leader.
+
+But even he became a little quiet when the light began to fail, and a
+little serious.
+
+"Whatever happens," he said, "it will be a great comfort to you to
+realize that it's entirely my fault. On the other hand, if we had
+gotten back into that boat, we might have been drowned long before
+this."
+
+A little later Phyllis said: "I'm about all in. It's too dark to see.
+I----"
+
+"Couldn't have chosen a better camping site myself," said Herring
+humbly. "First thing to think of is the water-supply--and fuel. Now,
+here the fuel grows right out of the water----"
+
+"We haven't any matches."
+
+"Yes, we have; but they are wet and won't light."
+
+"We'll die of cold before morning," said Phyllis; "there's no use
+pretending we won't."
+
+"On the contrary. Now is the time to pretend all sorts of things. Did
+you ever try to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Well, try it. It will make you warmer than the fire would. Afterward we
+will play 'Paddy cake, Paddy cake,' and 'Bean Porridge hot.'"
+
+"Do men in danger always carry on the way you do?" asked Phyllis.
+
+"Always," he answered.
+
+"I can understand trying to be funny during a cavalry charge, or while
+falling off a cliff," said Phyllis, "but not while slowly and miserably
+congealing."
+
+"You are not a Bostonian," said Herring. "Half the inhabitants of that
+municipality freeze to death and the others burn."
+
+"I've stayed in Boston," said Phyllis, "and the only difference that I
+could see between it and other places was that the people were more
+agreeable and things were done in better taste. And what gardens!"
+
+"Ever seen the Arboretum?"
+
+"Have I?"
+
+"In lilac time?"
+
+"Mm!"
+
+She was on her favorite topic. She forgot that she was cold, wet,
+miserable, and a frightful anxiety to her family.
+
+"But why be an innkeeper?" asked Herring. "Why not set up as a
+landscape-gardener?"
+
+"I don't know enough. But I've often thought----"
+
+"I've got five hundred acres outside of Boston that I'd like to turn you
+loose on."
+
+"You speak as if I were a goat."
+
+"The first thing to do is to drain the swamps. Now, I'll make you a
+proposition. I can't put it in writing, because it's too dark to see and
+I have no writing materials, but there is nothing fishy about us
+Herrings. You to landscape my place for me, cause a suitable house to
+be built, and so forth; I to pay you a thousand dollars a month, and a
+five per cent commission on the total expenditure."
+
+"And what might _that_ amount to?"
+
+"What you please," said Herring politely.
+
+"Who says Bostonians are cold?" exclaimed Phyllis. And there began to
+float through her head lovely visions of landscapes of her own making.
+
+"You're still joking, aren't you?" she said after a while.
+
+"I don't know landscapes well enough to joke about them," he said.
+
+"But I can't design a house!"
+
+"Oh, you will have architects to do that part. You just pick the general
+type."
+
+"What kind of a house do you want?"
+
+"It depends on what kind of a house _you_ want."
+
+"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "what fun it would be!"
+
+"Will you do it?"
+
+She was tempted beyond her strength.
+
+"Yes," she said, and began to talk with irresponsible delight and
+enthusiasm.
+
+"Ah," thought Herring to himself, "find out what really interests a girl
+and she'll forget all her troubles."
+
+It began suddenly to grow light.
+
+"Good heavens!" exclaimed Phyllis. "The woods must be on fire! Oh, the
+poor trees!"
+
+"It isn't fire," said Herring, "it's the moon--'Queen and huntress,
+chaste and fair--goddess excellently bright'--was ever such luck! I
+hoped we were going to stand here cosily all night talking about
+marigolds and cowslips and wallpapers, and now it's our duty to move on.
+Come, Goody Two Shoes, Policeman Moon has told us to move on. I shall
+never forget this spot. And I shan't ever be able to find it again."
+
+They toiled forward a little way, and lo! upon a sudden, they came to
+firm and rocky land that sloped abruptly upward from the swamp. They
+climbed for several hundred feet and came out upon a bare hilltop, from
+which could be seen billows of forest and one great horn of Half Moon
+Lake, silver in the moonlight.
+
+"Why, it isn't a mile to camp," said Phyllis. She swayed a little,
+tottered, rocked backward and then forward, and fell against Herring's
+breast in a dead faint.
+
+In a few moments she came to and found that she was being carried in
+strong arms. It was a novel, delicious, and restful sensation--one which
+it seemed immensely sensible to prolong. She did not, then, immediately
+open her eyes.
+
+She heard a voice cheerful, but very much out of breath, murmuring over
+her:
+
+"New experience. Never carried girl before. Experience worth repeating.
+Like 'em old-fashioned--like Great-grandmother Saltonstall. Like 'em to
+faint."
+
+A few minutes later, "Where am I?" said Phyllis.
+
+"In my arms," said Herring phlegmatically, as if that was one of her
+habitual residing places.
+
+"Put me down, please."
+
+"I hear," said he, "and I obey with extreme reluctance. I made a bet
+with myself that I could carry you all the way. And now I shall never
+know. Feel better?"
+
+"Mm," she said, and "What a nuisance I've been all through! But it was
+pretty bad, some of it, wasn't it?"
+
+"Already you are beginning to take pleasure in remembering. What did I
+tell you? Don't be frightened. I am going to shout."
+
+He shouted in a voice of thunder, and before the echo came back to them
+another voice, loud and excited, rose in the forest. And they heard
+smashings and crashings, as a wild bull tearing through brittle bushes.
+And presently Sam Langham burst out of the thicket with a shower of
+twigs and pine-needles.
+
+His delight was not to be measured in words. He apostrophized himself.
+
+"Good old Sam!" he said. "He knew you weren't drowned in the brook. He
+knew it would be just like Herring to want to cross that swamp. As soon
+as I heard somebody say that it was impassable, I said: 'Where is the
+other side? That's the place to look for them.' But why didn't you make
+more noise?"
+
+"Oh," said Herring, "we were so busy talking and exploring and doing
+things that had never been done before that it never occurred to us to
+shout."
+
+"Herring," said Langham sternly, "you have the makings of a hero, but
+not, I am afraid, of a woodsman."
+
+"Well, we're safe enough now," said Herring. "Excuse me a moment----"
+
+"Excuse you! What?"
+
+"It's very silly--been sick you know--over-exertion--think better faint
+and get it over with."
+
+Langham knelt and lifted Herring's head.
+
+"You lift his feet," he said to Phyllis, "send the blood to his heart;
+bring him to."
+
+Herring began to come out of his faint.
+
+"This young man," said Langham, "may be something of an ass, but he's
+got sand."
+
+"He carried me a long way," said Phyllis, the tears racing down her
+cheeks; "and he's only just over typhoid, and he never stopped being
+cheerful and gallant, and he _isn't_ an ass!"
+
+Herring came to, but was not able to stand. He had kept up as long as he
+had to, and now there was no more strength in him.
+
+Phyllis accepted the loan of Langham's coat.
+
+"I'll stay with him," she said, "while you go for help."
+
+The moment Langham's back was turned she spread the coat over Herring.
+
+"_Please--don't!_" he said.
+
+"You be quiet," said she sharply. "How do you feel?"
+
+"Pretty well used up, thank you. Hope you'll 'scuse me for this
+collapse. Shan't happen again. Lucky thing you and I don't both collapse
+same moment."
+
+A faint moan was wrung from him. She touched his cheek with her hand. It
+was hot as fire. She was an old-fashioned girl, and the instinct of
+nursing was strong in her.
+
+She was an old-fashioned girl. There had almost always been a young man
+in her life about whom, for a while, she wove more or less intensely
+romantic fancies. They came; they went. But almost always there was one.
+
+She raised her lovely face and looked at the moon, and made an unspoken
+confession. There had always been one. Well, now there was another!
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+When the real season opened, you might have thought that the whole
+venture was Mr. Sam Langham's and that he had risked the whole of his
+money in it. Without being officious, he had words of anxious advice for
+the Darlings, severally and collectively. His early breakfasts in Smoke
+House with Mary, the chef beaming upon the efficient and friendly pair,
+lost something of their free and easy social quality, and became
+opportunities for the gravest discussions of ways and means.
+
+The opening day would see every spare room in the place occupied--by a
+man. To Mary it seemed a little curious that so few women, so few
+families, and so many bachelors had applied for rooms. But to Sam
+Langham the reasons for this were clear and definite.
+
+"It was the picture in the first issues of your advertisement that did
+it. I only compliment and felicitate you when I say that every bachelor
+who saw that picture must have made up his mind to come here if he
+possibly could. And that every woman who saw it must have felt that she
+could spend a happier summer somewhere else. Now, if you had circulated
+a picture of half a dozen men, each as good-looking as your brother
+Arthur, the results would have been just the opposite."
+
+"Women aren't such idiots about other women's looks as you think they
+are," said Mary.
+
+"I didn't say they were idiots; I intimated that they were sensible. The
+prettiest woman at a summer resort always has a good time--not the best,
+necessarily, but very good. Now, no woman could look at that picture of
+you and your sisters and expect to be considered the prettiest woman
+_here_. Could she, Chef?"
+
+Chef laughed a loud, scornful, defiant, gesticulant, Gallic laugh. His
+good-natured features focussed into a scathing Parisian sneer; he turned
+a delicate omelette over in the air and said, "Lala!"
+
+"There are," continued Mr. Langham, "only half a dozen women in the
+world who can compare in looks with you and your sisters. There's the
+Princess Oducalchi--your mother. There's the Countess of Kingston, Mrs.
+Waring, Miss Virginia Clark--but these merely compare. They don't
+compete."
+
+Mr. Langham tried to look very sly and wicked, and he sang in a humming
+voice: "Oh, to be a Mussulman, now that spring is here."
+
+"Coffee?" said Mary.
+
+"Please."
+
+"Well," said she, as she poured, "the whys and wherefores don't matter.
+It's to be a bachelor resort--that seems definitely settled. But I think
+we had better send the triplets away. I don't want the Pritchard and
+Herring episodes repeated while my nerves are in this present state. And
+there's Lee--if she isn't leading Renier into one folly after another, I
+don't know what she is doing. They seem to think that keeping an inn is
+a mere excuse for flirtation."
+
+"Don't send them away," said Langham. "If you sent those three girls to
+a place where there weren't any men at all--they'd flirt with their
+shadows. Better have 'em flirting where you can watch 'em than where you
+can't. And besides--are you quite sure that the Pritchard and Herring
+episodes were mere flirtations? Day before yesterday I came upon Miss
+Gay by accident; she was practising casting."
+
+"That's how she spends half her time."
+
+"But she was practising with Pritchard's rod! Yesterday I came upon her
+in the same place----"
+
+"By accident?" smiled Mary.
+
+"By design," he said honestly. "And this time she wasn't casting. She
+had the rod lying across her knees, and her eyes were turned dreamily
+toward the bluest and most distant mountain-top."
+
+"'Why do you look at that mountain?' I said.
+
+"'Because it's blue, too,' said she.
+
+"'And what makes you blue?' I asked.
+
+"'The same cause that makes the mountain blue,' said she.
+
+"'Hum,' said I. 'Then it must be distance.'
+
+"'Something like that,' she said. 'I sometimes think I'm the most distant
+person in the world.'
+
+"'You're probably not the only person who thinks that!' said I.
+
+"And she said, 'No? Really?' And that was all I could get out of her.
+Except that, just as I was walking away, I heard a sharp whistling sound
+and my cap--my new plaid cap--was suddenly tweaked from the top of my
+head and hung in a tree. She must have practised a lot with that rod of
+Pritchard's. It was a beautiful cast----"
+
+"She might have put your eye out!" exclaimed Mary.
+
+"She hung the apple of my eye in a tree," said he dolefully. "You know
+that one with the green and brown? And last night it rained."
+
+"I hope she expressed sorrow," said Mary.
+
+"She was going to, but I got laughing and then she did."
+
+"What a dear you are!" exclaimed Mary. "And so you think she's making
+herself mournful over Mr. Pritchard? And what are the reasons for
+thinking that Phyllis is serious about Mr. Herring?"
+
+"He's sent for blue-prints of his property outside Boston, and they are
+busy with plans for landscaping it. Narrow escape that! I didn't let on;
+but the second day I thought he was a goner. I did."
+
+Mary sighed.
+
+"We might just as well have called it a matrimonial agency in the first
+place instead of an inn."
+
+Mr. Langham rose reluctantly.
+
+"I have an engagement with Miss Maud," he explained.
+
+The faintest ripple of disappointment flitted across Mary's forehead.
+
+"I've promised to help her with her books," said he. "Some of the
+journal entries puzzle her; and she has an idea that The Inn ought to
+have more capital. And we are going into that, too."
+
+"I hope," said Mary, "that you aren't going to lend us money without
+consulting me."
+
+Chef was in a distant corner, quite out of ear-shot. And Mr. Langham,
+emboldened by one of the most delicious breakfasts he had ever eaten,
+shot an arch glance at Miss Darling.
+
+"I wouldn't consult you about lending money," he said; "I wouldn't
+consult you about giving money. But any time you'll let me consult you
+about _sharing_ money----"
+
+Panic overtook him, and he turned and fled. But upon Mary's brow was no
+longer any ripple of disappointment--only the unbroken alabaster of
+smooth serenity. She reached for the household keys and said to herself:
+
+"Maud is a steady girl--even if the rest of us aren't."
+
+She caught a glimpse of herself in the bottom of a highly polished
+copper utensil and couldn't help being pleased with what she saw.
+
+On the way to the office Mr. Langham fell in with Arthur. This one,
+Uncas scolding and chatting upon his shoulder, was starting off for a
+day's botanizing--or dreaming maybe.
+
+"Arthur--one moment, please," said Langham. "As the head of the family
+I want to consult you about something."
+
+"Yes?" said Arthur sweetly. "Of course, Uncas, you are too noisy." And
+he put the offended little beast into his green collecting case.
+
+"I never would have come here," said Mr. Langham, "if it hadn't been for
+that advertisement."
+
+Arthur frowned slightly.
+
+"You mean----"
+
+"Yes. But I came," said Mr. Langham, "not as a pagan Turk but as a
+Christian gentleman. I was just about to take passage for Liverpool when
+I saw your sister Mary looking out at me from _The Four Seasons_. And so
+I wrote to ask if I could come here. I have lived well, but I am not
+disappointed. I am very rich----"
+
+"My dear Sam," said Arthur, "you are the best fellow in the world. What
+do you want of me?"
+
+"To know that you think I'd try my best to make a girl happy if she'd
+let me."
+
+"A girl?" smiled Arthur. "_Any_ girl?"
+
+"In all the world," said Mr. Langham, "there is only one girl."
+
+"If I were you," said Arthur, "I'd ask her what _she_ thought about
+it."
+
+Langham assumed a look of terrible gloom.
+
+"If she didn't think well of it I'd want to cut my throat. I'd rather
+keep on living in blissful uncertainty, but I wanted _you_ to
+know--_why_ I am here, and _why_ I want to stay on and on."
+
+"Why, I'm very glad to know," said Arthur, "but surely it's your own
+affair."
+
+Mr. Langham shook his head.
+
+"Last night," said he, "I was dozing on my little piazza. Who should row
+by at a distance but Miss Gay and Miss Lee. You know how sounds carry
+through an Adirondack night? Miss Lee said to Miss Gay: 'I tell you he
+doesn't. Not _really_. He's just a male flirt.' 'A butterfly,' said Miss
+Gay."
+
+"But how do you know they were referring to you?"
+
+"By the way the blessed young things laughed at the word '_butterfly_'.
+So I wanted you to know that my intentions are tragically serious, no
+matter what others may say. Whatever I may be, and I have been insulted
+more than once about my figure and my habits, I am _not_ a flirt. I am
+just as romantic as if I was a living skeleton."
+
+Here Arthur's head went back, and he laughed till the tears came. And
+Mr. Langham couldn't help laughing, too.
+
+A few moments later he was going over The Inn books with Maud Darling
+and displaying for her edification an astonishing knowledge of entries
+and a truly magical facility in figuring. Suddenly, apropos of something
+not in the least germane, he said:
+
+"Miss Maud, when in your opinion is the most opportune time for a man to
+propose to a girl?"
+
+"When he's got her alone," said she promptly, "and has just been
+dazzling her with a display of his erudition and understanding."
+
+And she, whom Mary had described as the one steady sister in the lot,
+flung him a melting and piercing glance. But Mr. Langham was not
+deceived.
+
+"I ask you an academic question," he said, "and you give me an
+absolutely cradle-snatching answer. I may _look_ easy, Miss Maud, but
+there are people who will protect me."
+
+"The best time to propose to a girl? You really want to know? I thought
+you were just starting one of your jokes."
+
+"If I am," said he, "the joke will be on me. But I _really_ want to
+know."
+
+"The best moment," said she, "is that moment in which she learns that
+one of her friends or one of her sisters younger than she is engaged to
+be married. When an unengaged girl hears of another girl's engagement
+she has a momentary panic, during which she is helpless and defenseless.
+That is my best judgment, Mr. Sam Langham. And the older the girl the
+greater the panic. And now I've betrayed my sex. In fact, I have told
+you absolutely all that is definitely known about girls."
+
+Just outside the office he met Gay.
+
+"Halloo!" she said.
+
+He only made signs at her and flapped his arms up and down.
+
+"_They_ can't talk," he said.
+
+"Who can't talk?"
+
+He held her with a stern glance, and if the word had been hissable,
+would have hissed it.
+
+"Butterflies," he said.
+
+Then Miss Gay turned the color of a scarlet maple in the fall of the
+year. Then she squealed and ran.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+"Are we all here?" asked Mary.
+
+She had summoned her sisters and Arthur to the office for a conference.
+
+"All except Sam Langham," said Gay.
+
+"I didn't know that he was one of the family," said Mary.
+
+"Of course, you _know_," said Gay; "you would. _I_ was just guessing."
+
+"Well, he isn't," said Mary, trying not to change color or to enjoy
+being teased about Mr. Langham.
+
+The triplets sat in a row upon a bench made of little birch logs with
+the bark on. It was not soft sitting, as Lee whispered, but one had
+one's back to the light, and in case one had done something wrong
+without knowing it and was in for a scolding, that would prove an
+immense advantage.
+
+"What I wanted to say," said Mary, "is just this----"
+
+She stood up and looked rather more at the triplets than any one else,
+so that Lee exclaimed, "Votes for women," and Gay echoed her with,
+"Yes, but none for poor little girls in their teens."
+
+"Hitherto," continued the orator, "The Inn has been only informally
+open. It's been more like having a few friends stopping with us. We had
+to see more or less of them. But after to-day there will be a crowd, and
+I think it would be more dignified and pleasanter for them if _some_ of
+us kept ourselves a little more to ourselves. What do _you_ think,
+Arthur?"
+
+Arthur looked up sweetly. It was evident that he had not been listening.
+
+"Why, Mary," he said, "I think it might be managed with infinite
+patience."
+
+The triplets giggled; Maud and Eve exchanged amused looks.
+
+"Arthur," said Mary, "you can make one contribution to this discussion
+if you want to. You can tell us what you are really thinking about, so
+that we needn't waste time trying to guess."
+
+"Why," said he gently, "you know I have quite a knack with animals,
+taming them and training them, and I was wondering if it would be
+possible to train a snail. _That's_ what I was thinking about. I have a
+couple in my pocket at the moment, and----"
+
+"Never mind _now_," said Mary hurriedly, and she turned to the
+triplets. "What do _you_ think of what I said?"
+
+"I think it was tortuous and involved," said Lee, "and that it would
+hardly bear repetition."
+
+"It smacked of paternalism," said Gay. And even Phyllis, her mind upon
+the convalescing Herring, was moved to speak.
+
+"You said it would be more dignified for some of us to keep to
+ourselves. Perhaps it would. You said it would be pleasanter for the
+people who are coming here to stay. I doubt it!"
+
+"Bully for you, old girl," shouted Lee and Gay; "sick her!"
+
+Mary moaned. She was proof against their hostilities, but the language
+in which they were couched pierced her to the marrow.
+
+"I am sure," she said, "that Maud and Eve will agree with me."
+
+"Of course," said Eve.
+
+"Naturally," said Maud.
+
+"There!" exclaimed Mary, with evident triumph.
+
+"We agree," said Eve, "that _some_ of us should keep ourselves more to
+ourselves."
+
+And she looked sternly at the triplets. But then she turned and looked
+sternly at Mary and rose to her feet.
+
+"We think," she said with a _j'accuse_ intonation, "that those who
+haven't kept themselves to themselves should, and that those who
+have--shouldn't. Maud and I, for instance, haven't the slightest
+objection to being fetched for and carried for by attractive young men.
+Have we, Maud? But hitherto, as must have been obvious to the veriest
+nincompoop, we have done our own fetching and carrying."
+
+There was a short silence. Mary blushed. Arthur fidgeted. He was
+wondering if snails preferred the human voice or whistling.
+
+"I'm quite sure," said Maud, "that I haven't been wandering over the
+hills with future earls, or lost in swamps with interesting invalids, or
+basked morning after morning in the sunny smile of a gourmet----"
+
+Mary paled under this attack.
+
+"Mr. Langham is altogether different," she said.
+
+"Oh, quite!" cried Lee.
+
+"Utterly, absolutely different!" cried Gay. "To begin with, he's richer;
+and to end with, he's fatter."
+
+"I shouldn't have said 'fat,'" said Lee. "I should have said
+'well-larded,' but then I am something of a stylist."
+
+"Sam Langham," said Mary, "is everybody's friend. And he's an immense
+help in lots of ways; and then he has a certain definite interest in The
+Inn. Because, if we need it, he's going to lend us money to carry our
+accounts."
+
+Gay whispered to Lee behind her hand. Lee giggled.
+
+"What was that?" asked Mary sharply.
+
+"Only a quotation."
+
+"What quotation?"
+
+"Oh, Gay just said something about 'Bought and Paid For.'"
+
+Here Arthur interrupted.
+
+"They're like snails," said he to Mary. "You can only train 'em with
+infinite patience."
+
+Phyllis rose suddenly and became the cynosure of all eyes except her
+own, whose particular cynosure at the moment was the floor. She moved
+toward the door.
+
+"Where are you off to?" asked Mary.
+
+"I'm just going to speak to Chef."
+
+"What about?"
+
+"About some chicken broth."
+
+"For yourself?"
+
+The gentle Phyllis was being goaded beyond endurance. At the door she
+turned and lifted her great eyes to Mary's.
+
+"No," she said bitterly; "it's for Arthur's snails."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"If there's any voting," said Phyllis, "I give my proxy to Gay." And she
+vanished through the door.
+
+"I'm sure," said Mary, "I don't know what the modern young girl is
+coming to!"
+
+"I know where _that_ one is going to," said Gay; "spilling the chicken
+broth in her unseemly haste."
+
+Then Arthur spoke.
+
+"The modern young girl," he said, "is coming to just where her
+grandmother came, and by the same road. Girls will be girls. So let's be
+thankful that the men who have come here so far have been--men. And
+hopeful that those who are to come will be also. I've lived too much
+with nature not to know what's natural--when I see it."
+
+"Do you think," said Gay sweetly, "that it's natural for a man to eat as
+much as Sam Langham does?"
+
+"As natural under the peculiar circumstances," said Arthur, "as it is
+for you to tease."
+
+Lee rose.
+
+"And you?" said Mary, smiling at last.
+
+"Oh," said Lee witheringly, "I have an engagement to carve initials
+surrounded by a heart on a birch-tree."
+
+And when Lee had gone Gay spoke up.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder," said she, "if, by way of a blind, the baggage had
+told the truth."
+
+"We should never have called it The Inn," said Mary; "we should have
+called it The Matrimonial Agency."
+
+"Every pretty girl," said Arthur, "is a matrimonial agency."
+
+At this moment Uncas, the chipmunk, rushed screaming into the room and
+flung himself into Arthur's lap. Arthur comforted the little beast, and
+noticed that his nose and face bore fresh evidences of a fight. Uncas
+complained very bitterly; he was evidently trying to talk.
+
+"Is Stripes hurt?" asked Mary.
+
+"It's his feelings," said Arthur. "He's been made a victim of misplaced
+confidence. Some young woman has been encouraging him."
+
+"Poor little man!" said Gay with sudden emotion. "Did ums want some nice
+vasy on ums poor sick nose?"
+
+"He would only lick it off," regretted Arthur.
+
+Mr. Langham's jolly face appeared in the open door.
+
+"I've seen two depart," he said, "and thought maybe the meeting was
+over."
+
+"It is," said Mary, and, after a moment's hesitation, she boldly joined
+Mr. Langham and walked off by his side. Even Arthur chuckled.
+
+"And what was the meeting about?" asked Mr. Langham.
+
+"Oh," said Mary, "they won't be serious--not any of them--not even
+Arthur. So we forgot what the meeting was for, and got into violent
+discussion about--about natural history."
+
+"And what side did you take?"
+
+"Oh," said Mary, "we were all on the same side--_really_, and that was
+what made the discussion so violent."
+
+"The day," said Langham, "is young. I feel ripe for an adventure. And
+you?"
+
+"What sort of an adventure?"
+
+"I thought that if one--or rather if _two_ climbed to the top of a very
+little hill and sat down in the sunshine and admired the view----"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Far out on the lake they could see Lee, lolling in the stern of a guide
+boat. Young Renier was at the oars. But the boat was not being
+propelled. It was merely drifting.
+
+"I wonder," said Langham, and he watched her face stealthily, "if by any
+chance those two are really engaged?"
+
+Was there the least hardening of that lovely, gentle face, the least
+fleeting expression of that sort of panic which one experiences when
+arriving at the station in time to see the train pull out but not too
+late to get aboard by the exercise of swift and energetic manoeuvres?
+
+"Don't say such things!" she said presently. "It's like jumping out from
+behind a tree and shouting, 'Boo!'"
+
+Mr. Langham smiled complacently and changed the subject. But he said to
+himself: "That Maud is a clever girl!"
+
+"I suppose," said Mary after a while, "that this is the last really
+peaceful day we'll have for a long time. To-morrow the place will be
+full of strange, critical faces. And it will be one long wrestle to make
+everything go smoothly all the time."
+
+She sighed.
+
+"There are only two ways to success," said Langham. "One is across the
+wrestling-mat, and one is through the pasture of old Bull Luck. But I'm
+convinced that The Inn is going to pay very handsomely. There is a
+fortune in it."
+
+"There mightn't be," said Mary, "if--" and she broke into a peal of
+embarrassed laughter.
+
+"If what?"
+
+"I was thinking of that _dreadful_ picture."
+
+"I often think of it," said Mr. Langham, "and of the first time I saw
+it."
+
+Mary gave him a somewhat shy look.
+
+"Of course it didn't influence you," she said.
+
+"But it did. And that day I forgot to eat any lunch. I am looking
+forward," he said, "to warm weather--I enjoy a swim as much as anybody."
+
+"Why is it," said Mary, "that a girl is ashamed when it is her money
+that attracts a man, and proud when it is her face? Both are equally
+fortuitous; both are assets in a way--but of the two, it is the money
+alone which is really useful."
+
+"It sounds convincing to a girl," mused Mr. Langham, "when a man says to
+her: 'I love you because of your beautiful blue eyes!' But it wouldn't
+sound in the least convincing if he said: 'I love you because of your
+beautiful green money!' I don't attempt to explain this. I am merely
+stating what appears to me to be a fact. But, as you say, money is, or
+should be, an asset of attraction."
+
+"I suppose beauty is held in greater esteem," said Mary, "because it is
+more democratically bestowed. Money seems to beget hatred because it
+isn't."
+
+"The French people," said Langham, "hated the nobility because of their
+wealth and luxury. To-day a common mechanic has more real luxuries at
+his disposal than poor Louis XVI had, but he hates the rich people who
+have more than he has--and so it will go on to the end of time."
+
+"Will there always be rich people and poor people?"
+
+"There will always be rich people, but some time they will learn to
+spend their money more beneficently, and then there won't be any really
+poor people. If the attic of your house were infected with dirt and
+vermin you couldn't sleep until it had been cleaned and disinfected. So,
+some day, rich men will feel about their neighbors; cities about their
+slums; and nations about other nations. I can imagine a future Uncle Sam
+saying to a future John Bull"--and he sunk his voice to a comically
+confidential whisper: "'Say, old man, I hear you're pressed for ready
+cash; now't just so happens I'm well fixed at the moment, and--oh, just
+among friends! Bother the interest!' What a spectacle this world
+is--it's like the old English schools that Dickens wrote out of
+existence--just bullying and hazing all around! Why, if a country was
+run on the most elementary principles of honesty and efficiency, the
+citizens of that country would never have occasion to say: 'Our taxes
+are almost unbearable.' They would be nudging each other in the streets
+and saying: 'My, that was a big dividend we got!'"
+
+Mr. Langham only stopped because he was out of breath. His face was red
+and shining. He mopped his brow with his handkerchief.
+
+Mary was almost perfectly happy. She loved to hear Langham run on and
+on. His voice was so pleasant, and his face beamed so with kindness. And
+from many things which he had from time to time let slip she was
+convinced that she needn't be an old maid unless she wanted to be. And
+so to climb a little hill with him, to sit in the sun, and to admire the
+view was really an exciting venture. For she never knew what he was
+going to let slip next. And equally exciting was the fact that if that
+slip should be in the nature of a leading question, she could only guess
+what her answer would be.
+
+When a man is offered something that he very much wants--a trifling
+loan, for instance--his first instinct is to deny the need. And a girl,
+when the man she wants offers himself, usually refuses at the first
+time of asking. And some, especially rich in girl nature, which is
+experience of human nature and somewhat short of divine, will persist in
+refusing even unto the twentieth and thirtieth time.
+
+Mary Darling was in a deep reverie. From this, his eyes twinkling behind
+their thick glasses, Mr. Langham roused her with the brisk utterance of
+one of his favorite quotations:
+
+"'General Blank's compliments,'" said he, "'and he reports that the
+colored troops are turning black in the face.'"
+
+Mary smiled her friendliest smile.
+
+"I was wondering," she said, "what had become of Lee and Renier."
+
+"I have noted," said Mr. Langham, "that she always calls him by his last
+name, sometimes with the prefix you--'You Renier' put like that. And I
+was wondering if he ever turns the trick on her."
+
+"Why should he?" asked Mary innocently.
+
+"You have forgotten," said he, "that her last name is Darling." His eyes
+twinkled with amazing and playful boldness. "You're _all_ Darlings," he
+exclaimed, "and"--a note of self-pity in his voice--"I'm just a fat old
+stuff!"
+
+"That," said Mary primly, "is perfectly correct, but for three trifling
+errors--you're not fat, you're not old, and you're not a stuff!"
+
+If she had told him that he was handsome as Apollo he could not have
+been more pleased.
+
+And so their adventure progressed in the pleasant sunlight that warmed
+the top of the little hill. No very exciting adventure, you say? And of
+a shilly-shallying and even snail-like motion?
+
+Oh, you can't be always riding to rescues, and falling over cliffs, and
+escaping from burning houses.
+
+At that moment, by the purest accident, the tip of Mr. Langham's right
+forefinger just brushed against Mary's sleeve. And there went through
+him from head to foot a great thrill, as if trumpets had suddenly
+sounded.
+
+"I suppose," said Mary, after a little while, "that we ought to be
+going."
+
+"But I'd rather sit here than eat," said Mr. Langham.
+
+"Honestly? So would I."
+
+"Then," said Mr. Langham, "without exposing ourselves to any other
+danger than that of starvation, I propose that we lose ourselves--as
+_other people do_--in short, that we remain here until one or other of
+us would rather--eat."
+
+"Good gracious," said Mary, "we might be here a week!"
+
+Mr. Langham rose slowly to his feet. Far off he could see pale smoke
+flitting upward through the tree-tops. He turned and looked into Miss
+Darling's smiling, upturned face.
+
+"I'll just run down and tell Arthur we're not _really_ lost," he said.
+"But I'll make him promise not to look for us. I'll be right
+back--almost before you can say 'Jack Robinson.'"
+
+She held out her hands. He took them and helped her to her feet. And
+then they both laughed aloud.
+
+"Thank Heaven," said Mary, "that whatever else you and I may suffer
+from, it isn't from insanity--or slim appetites! As a matter of fact,
+I'm famished."
+
+"Thank God!" said Mr. Langham; "so am I."
+
+And they began to descend the hill. For to keep men and women and
+adventurers going, the essential thing is food. And there's many a
+promising romance that has come to nothing for want of a loaf of bread
+and a jug of wine.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+In a certain part of the Land of Cotton, where they grow nothing but
+rice, Colonel Melville Meredith stood beside the charred foundations of
+a house and nursed his chin with his hand. With the exception of a sword
+which the King of Greece had given him, all those possessions which he
+had considered of value had gone up in smoke with the house of his
+ancestors. The family portraits were gone, the silver Lamarie, and
+Lesage, and all the Domingan satinwood. If Colonel Meredith had been an
+older man, he must almost have wept. But the grip upon his chin was not
+of one mourning. It was the grip of consideration. He was wondering what
+sort of a new house he should build upon the foundations of the old.
+
+He must, of course, build upon the old site. There were other good sites
+among his thousands of acres, but none which was so well planted. A good
+architect could copy the Taj Mahal for you. But the Pemaque oak is one
+hundred and seven feet, or less, in circumference, and the avenue of
+oaks leading from the turnpike, two miles away, was planted in 1653.
+There were also divers jungles of rhododendrons, laurel, and azalea in
+the river garden that it had taken no less than a great-grandmother to
+plant.
+
+"It can't be the first conflagration in the family," he thought.
+"Everybody's ancestors, at one time or another, must have lost by fire
+and built again. As for Pemaque--it _was_ a lovely old house, but a new
+house could be just as lovely, and it could have bathrooms and be made
+rat-proof. And I wouldn't mind if people scratched the floors."
+
+I have said that Colonel Meredith had lost all the possessions which he
+valued. But of course the land remained, the trees, the duck ponds, the
+alligator sloughs, and so forth. There remained, also, a robust youth,
+crowded with experiences and memories of wars and statesmen and of
+delightful people who live for pleasure. There remained, also--least
+valuable of all to a man of action and sentiment--a perfectly safe
+income, derived from bonds, of nearly two hundred and fifty thousand
+dollars a year. Colonel Meredith was by all odds the richest man in that
+part of the Land of Cotton, where they grow nothing but rice.
+
+It was piping hot among the foundations of the old house; the sticky,
+ticky season had descended upon the Carolina seacoast. The snakes and
+the lizards were saying among themselves, "Now this is really something
+like," and were behaving accordingly. Every few minutes a new and
+ambitious generation of mosquitoes was hatched. The magnolias were going
+to seed. Colonel Meredith's Gordon setter, a determined expression upon
+his face, had been scratching himself with almost supercanine speed for
+the last twenty minutes.
+
+Colonel Meredith scorned ticks, trod with indifference upon snakes, and
+was not poisoned or even pained by mosquitoes, but he had travelled all
+over the world and was not averse to being cooler and more comfortable.
+
+"We've got the grandest climate in the world," he thought loyally, "for
+eight months in the year--but when it comes to summer give me Vera Cruz,
+Singapore, or even hell. I'll build a home for autumn, winter, and
+spring, but when it gets to be summer, I'll go away and shoot polar
+bears."
+
+He whistled his dog and walked thoughtfully to where his automobile was
+waiting in the shade. His driver, an Irish boy from New York, was in a
+state of wilt.
+
+"I have determined," said Colonel Meredith, "not to begin building
+until cool weather. We shall go North to-night. I hope the thought will
+refresh you. Now we will go back to Mr. Jonstone's. Do you feel able to
+drive, or shall I?"
+
+It was typical of the region that the Mr. Jonstone with whom Meredith
+was stopping should own the best bed of mint south of Washington, and
+could make the best mint-juleps. The mint-bed was about all he did own.
+Everything else was heavily mortgaged. Everything, that is, except the
+family silver and jewels. These Jonstone's grandmother had buried when
+Sherman came marching through, and had almost immediately forgotten
+where she had buried them. Jonstone employed one trustworthy negro whose
+year-around business was to dig for the treasure. There existed a list
+of the objects buried, which was enough to make even a rich man's palm
+itch.
+
+"Nothing to-day," said Jonstone as his guest drove up. "And it's about
+time for a julep."
+
+"I'm going North to-night," said Meredith, "and you're going with me."
+
+They were cousins, second or third, of about the same age. They even
+looked alike, but whereas Meredith had travelled all over the world,
+Jonstone had never been south of Savannah or north of Washington.
+
+He began with an ivory toddy-stick to convert sugar and Bourbon into
+sirup.
+
+"How's that, Mel?" he asked. "And why?"
+
+"Between us two, Bob," said Meredith, "this is one hell of a climate in
+summer. The brighter we are the quicker we'll get out of it."
+
+"I'd like to go you on that, but aside from the family silver I haven't
+a penny in the world."
+
+"Bob, I'm sick of offering to lend you money. I'm sick of offering to
+give you money. There's only one chance left."
+
+Jonstone made a gentle clashing sound with fine ice.
+
+"As you know, my family silver has all gone up in smoke. Now yours
+hasn't. Suppose you sell me yours. What's it worth?"
+
+"With or without the diamonds?"
+
+"If I should ever marry, it would be advisable to have the diamonds."
+
+"Well," said Jonstone, beginning to turn over a bundle of straws, with
+the object of selecting four which should be flawless, "I don't want to
+stick you. We have a complete list of the pieces, with their weights and
+dates. Some of the New York dealers could tell us what the collection
+would be worth in the open market. Double that sum in the name of
+sentiment, and I'll go you."
+
+"I must have a free hand to hunt for the stuff in my own way-- It's
+perfection--you never, never made a better one--now, how about the
+diamonds?"
+
+"I have the weights. And you know the Jonstones were always particular
+about water."
+
+"That's why they are all dead but you. Then you'll come?"
+
+Bob Jonstone nodded.
+
+"You'll have to lend me a suit of clothes--but, look here, Mel: suppose
+the silver and stuff has been lifted--doesn't exist any more? Wouldn't
+I, in selling it to you, be guilty of sharp practice?"
+
+"Our great-great-grandfather, the Signer, doesn't exist any more, Bob.
+That silver is somewhere--in some form or other. I pay for it, and it's
+mine. Does it matter if I never see it or handle it? I shall always be
+able to allude to it--isn't that enough? As for you, you'll be able to
+pay all your mortgages, to fix the front door so's it won't have to be
+kept shut with a keg of nails, and to spend what is necessary on your
+fields."
+
+"Of course," said Jonstone, who had finished his julep. "It afflicts me
+to part with what has been in the family so long."
+
+"But you ought to be afflicted."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Didn't you vote for Wilson?"
+
+Jonstone nodded solemnly.
+
+"Come, then," said Meredith, as if he were pardoning an erring child;
+"there's just time for one julep and to pack up our things. You'll just
+love New York. And when we get there we'll make up our minds whether
+we'll go to Newport or Bar Harbor. Bob, did it ever occur to you that
+you and I ought to get married? That looks as if it was going to be
+better than the other, though darker-- What's the use of having
+ancestors if you're not going to be one?"
+
+"Show me a girl as handsome as Sully's portrait of Great-grandmother
+Pringle, and I'll take notice."
+
+"Why, every other girl in a Broadway chorus has got the old lady skinned
+to death, Bob!"
+
+"You may be worldly-wiser than me, Mel, but you've lost your reverence.
+It's always been agreed in the family that Great-grandmother Pringle was
+the most beautiful woman in the South. And when a man says 'the South,'
+and refers at the same time to female charms, he has as good as said the
+whole world."
+
+"Bob, among ourselves, do you really think Jefferson Davis was a
+greater man than Abraham Lincoln?"
+
+"Ssssh!" said Jonstone.
+
+"Do you really think the Southern armies wiped up the map with the
+Northern armies every time they met? And do you really think that
+wooden-faced doll that Sully painted has no equal for beauty north of
+the Mason and Dixon line? What you need is travel and experience."
+
+"What's the matter with _you_ getting married?--My God, don't spill
+that, Mel!"
+
+"There's nothing the matter with it. And I'll tell you what I'll do: I
+will if you will."
+
+"They ought to be sisters, seeing as how you and I have always been like
+brothers and voted the Democratic ticket and fought chickens."
+
+"And fed the same ticks and mosquitoes."
+
+"We'll have a double wedding. We'll each be the other's best man, and
+they'll each be the other's best girl."
+
+"No--no; they are each to be our best girls."
+
+"What I mean is----"
+
+"I know what you mean, but you've made this julep too strong."
+
+"That's _one_ thing they can't do in the North."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Make a julep."
+
+Meredith considered this at some length. "No, Bob," he said at length,
+"they can't. But I once met a statesman from Maine who made a thing that
+looked like a julep, tasted like a julep, and that--I'd say it if it was
+my dying statement--had the same effect."
+
+"She must be better-looking than Great-grandmother Pringle," said
+Jonstone. "She must be able to make a julep, and she must have a sister
+just like her. Can you lend me a suit of clothes till we get to New
+York?"
+
+"I can lend you anything from a yachting suit to a Bulgarian uniform."
+
+"And you're sure I'm not imposing on you in the matter of the silver?"
+
+"Sure. I just want to know it's mine."
+
+In the morning, soon after this precious pair had breakfasted, a boy
+went through the train with newspapers and magazines. He proclaimed in
+the sweetest Virginian voice that his magazines were just out, but a
+copy of _The Four Seasons_ which Colonel Meredith bought proved not only
+to be of an ancient date but to have had coffee spilled upon it.
+
+At the moment when this discovery was made, the youthful paper-monger
+had just swung from the crawling train to the platform of a way
+station, so there was no redress. The cousins agreed, laughing, that if
+a Yankee had played them such a trick they would have wished to cut his
+heart out, but that, turned upon them by a fellow countryman, it was
+merely a proof of smartness and push.
+
+"Between you and me, Bob," said Colonel Meredith, "an accurate count of
+our Southern population would proclaim a villain or two here and there.
+I was brought up to believe that to be born in a certain region was all
+that was necessary. But that's not so. I tell you this because I am
+afraid that when you are meeting people in New York and having a good
+time you will be wanting to lay down the law, to wit, that one
+Southerner can whip five Yankees. Don't do it. I will tell you a horrid
+truth. I was once whipped by a small-sized Frenchman within an inch of
+my life. He had studied _le boxe_ under Carpentier and I hadn't. Did you
+ever study _le boxe_? No? An Anglo-Saxon imagines that he was born
+boxing. And it takes a licking by a man of Latin blood to prove to him
+that he wasn't. Just because people make funny noises and monkey cries
+when they fight doesn't prove that they are afraid. There is nothing so
+ridiculous as a baboon going into action and nothing more terrible when
+he gets there."
+
+"The more you travel, Mel, the more you show a deplorable tendency to
+foul your own nest."
+
+"_I_ run down the South? I like that! But, my dear Bob, there is only
+one chosen people. And it isn't us." Here he made a significant gesture
+with his hands, turning the palms up, and they both laughed. "A Jew," he
+went on, "is what he is because he is a Jew. His good points and his bad
+are racial. But between two men of our race there is no material
+resemblance. One is mean, the other generous; one broad, one narrow; one
+brave, the other not. Do you know why hornless cows give less milk than
+horned cows? Because there are fewer of them. Do you know why there are
+more honest men in the North, and pretty girls, than there are in the
+South? Simply because there are more men and more girls. It also follows
+that there are more dishonest men and ugly girls; more of everything, in
+fact."
+
+He was slowly turning over the pages of _The Four Seasons_, looking
+always, with Pemaque in mind, at pictures of country houses. Suddenly he
+closed the magazine, looked pensively out of the window, and began to
+whistle with piercing sweetness. He once more opened the magazine, but
+this time with great caution as if he was half afraid that something
+disagreeable would jump out at him. Nothing did, however. He folded the
+magazine back upon itself and held it close to his eyes, then far off,
+then at mid-distance.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" said Bob Jonstone.
+
+"Nothing," said Meredith, "only I'm thinking there ought to be six of us
+instead of only two. Look at that page and tell me where we're going to
+spend the summer."
+
+Jonstone took the magazine and saw the six Darling sisters sitting on
+the float in their bathing-dresses. Presently he smiled and said:
+"You've just won an argument, Mel."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"Why, in the South there wouldn't be so many of them--but maybe they are
+not always there. Maybe they were only there last summer."
+
+"Well, we can find out where they've gone, can't we?"
+
+"It doesn't seem in strict good breeding to pursue ladies one doesn't
+know."
+
+"Why, bless you, I chased all over Europe after a face I saw in _The
+Sketch_, only to find out that she was willing to marry anybody with
+money and had a voice like a guinea-hen. And after I'd found that out,
+she chased _me_ all over Europe and as far East as Cairo."
+
+"I've never been chased by a woman," said Jonstone a little wistfully.
+"What happened in the end?"
+
+"I left Cairo between two days, fled away into the desert with some
+people just stepped out of the Bible, and never came back."
+
+"Suppose she hadn't been willing to marry you and had had a voice like a
+dove?"
+
+"Don't suppose. We are on a new quest."
+
+"What is the Adirondacks?"
+
+"We wouldn't think much of it in the South. It's a place where you are
+always cool and clean and can drink the nearest water. The trout don't
+eat mud and haven't got long white whiskers, and the deer are bigger
+than dogs, and you don't go to sleep at night. The night just comes and
+puts you to sleep. It's just like Bar Harbor--only a little more so in
+some ways and a little less so in others."
+
+Jonstone spread _The Four Seasons_ wide open upon his knees.
+
+"Let's agree right now," he said, "which each of us thinks is the
+prettiest. It would be dreadful after travelling so far if we were both
+to pick on the same one."
+
+"We would have to fight a duel," said Meredith, "with swords, and
+considering that you could never even sharpen a pencil without cutting
+yourself----"
+
+"A boy wouldn't come along," said Jonstone, "and sell us a copy of a
+magazine months old if fate hadn't meant us to see this picture. I think
+I like the third one from the end."
+
+"I think I like the three that look just alike."
+
+"That is because you have travelled in Turkey. You never seem to
+remember that you are a Christian gentleman."
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+When they found out how much the buried silver was worth--the inventory
+was very thorough in the matter of description, dates, and weights--Mr.
+Bob Jonstone burst out laughing. But Colonel Meredith, although
+determined to stand by his bargain whatever the cash cost, looked like a
+man who has just missed the last train.
+
+"I haven't got that much money loose, Bob," he said, "but I can raise it
+in a few days and then we'll execute a bill of sale. Meanwhile, allow me
+to congratulate you on your accession to the aristocracy."
+
+"Aristocracy? It's blood that counts--not money."
+
+"According to the old democracy, yes. According to the new,
+distinguished people pay an income tax and common people don't. And you,
+a moment ago, before the valuation was completed, were a very common
+fellow, indeed."
+
+"Mel, I had no idea that old junk was worth so much."
+
+"You hadn't? Well, it's worth more. I'm getting a bargain. Thank the
+Lord you're a gentleman, so there's no danger of your backing out."
+
+Jonstone seized his cousin's hand and pressed it affectionately.
+
+"Mel," he said, "can you afford to do this thing? God knows the money
+will make all the difference in the world to me! But in taking it I
+don't feel any too noble."
+
+"It was always ridiculous for me to be rich and for you to be poor.
+That's done with. I'm still rich, thank God!--and you're well-to-do. You
+can travel if you like, breed horses, install plumbing, burn coal, and
+marry."
+
+"If I was sure that the silver would ever be turned up, I wouldn't feel
+so sheepish."
+
+"As long as you don't look sheepish or act sheepish--suppose that now,
+after a slight fortification, we visit a tailor. It is necessary for you
+to dress according to your station in life."
+
+Their first day in New York was immensely amusing to both of them.
+Meredith was coming back to it after a long absence; Jonstone was seeing
+it for the first time, and for the first time his pockets were full of
+money that he did not owe. Now, New York is one of the finest summer
+resorts in the world. Do not pity the poor business man who sends his
+family to the mountains for the hot weather, for while they are burned
+by the sun and fed an interminable succession of blueberry pies, he
+basks in the cool of electric fans and dines on the fat of the land. His
+business may worry him, but there is no earthly use in his attending to
+it. That is done for him. He can skip away when he pleases for an
+afternoon's golf or tennis. Somebody's motor is always going somewhere
+where there is pleasure to be found and laughter. The lights of Luna
+Park are brighter than the Bar Harbor stars, and the ocean which pounds
+upon Long Beach is just as salt as that which thunders against Great
+Head--and about twice as warm. For pure torture give me a swim anywhere
+north of Cape Cod. Merely to step into such water is like having one's
+foot bitten off by a shark.
+
+It did not take Jonstone long to acknowledge that New York is even
+bigger than Richmond, Virginia, and even livelier. The discovery of a
+superannuated mosquito in his bathroom had made him feel at home, and
+the fact that the head bartender in the hotel, though a native of
+Ireland, fashioned a delicious julep.
+
+But his equanimity came very near to being upset in the subway. He felt
+a hand slipping into his pocket and caught it by the wrist. He had a
+grip like looped wire twisted with pinchers. The would-be thief uttered
+a startled shriek and was presently turned over to a policeman.
+
+All the way to the station-house Mr. Jonstone talked excitedly and
+triumphantly to his cousin.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said, "you had me groggy with your high buildings and
+your Aladdin-cave stores and your taxicabs and park systems. But by the
+Everlasting, sir, this would never have happened to me south of the
+Mason and Dixon line. No, sir; we may be short on show but we're long on
+honesty down there. I don't even have to lock my door at night."
+
+"That's because the lock's broken and you've always kept it shut with a
+keg of nails. There are more pickpockets in New York than in Charleston,
+but only because there are more pockets to pick."
+
+"I don't get you," said Jonstone stiffly. A little later he did.
+
+The culprit was asked his name by a formidable desk sergeant.
+
+"Stephen Breckenridge."
+
+Bob Jonstone gasped.
+
+"Where do you come from?"
+
+"Lexington, Kentucky."
+
+Colonel Meredith let forth a howl of laughter. And after he had been
+frowned into decorum by the sergeant, he continued for a long time to
+look as if he was going to burst.
+
+For some hours Mr. Jonstone was moody and unamused. Then suddenly he
+broke into a winning smile.
+
+"Mel," he said, "I wouldn't have minded so much if he had been smart
+enough to get my money. It was bad finding out that he was a compatriot
+of ours, but much more to realize that he was a fool."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Mr. Langham was consulted about everything. And it was to him that Maud
+Darling took Meredith's letter asking for accommodations.
+
+"We've only two rooms left," she said, "and such nice people have come,
+or are coming, that it would be an awful pity if we had the bad luck to
+fill up with two men that weren't nice. Did you ever hear of a Colonel
+Meredith?"
+
+"Is that his letter? May I look?"
+
+Mr. Langham read the letter through very carefully. Then he said,
+looking at her over the tops of his thick glasses:
+
+"I don't know if you know it, but I have made quite a study of
+handwritings. The writer of this letter is a gentleman--a Southern
+gentleman, if I am not mistaken. Accepting this premise, we may assume
+that his friend Mr. Robert Middleton Jonstone is also a Southern
+gentleman. Middleton, in fact, is pure South Carolinian."
+
+"But if they are from South Carolina, wouldn't our terms stagger them?
+I've always understood that Southern gentlemen lost all their money in
+the war."
+
+"Nevertheless," said Mr. Langham, "this is the writing of a rich man."
+
+"How _can_ you know that?"
+
+"I tell you that I have made a study of handwriting. It is also the
+writing of a horse-loving, war-loving, much-travelled man--in the late
+twenties."
+
+"You will tell me next that he is about five feet ten inches tall, has
+blue eyes, and is handsome as an angel."
+
+"You take the words out of my mouth, Miss Maud."
+
+"Tell me more." She was laughing now.
+
+"He is very handsome, but not as angels are--his eyes are too bold and
+roving. If he wasn't a good man he would be a very bad man. There was a
+time, even, when strong drink appealed to him. He is quixotically brave
+and generous. And I should by all means advise you to let him have his
+accommodations."
+
+"I can never tell when you are joking."
+
+"I was never more serious in my life. Shall I tell you something else
+that I have deduced?"
+
+"Please."
+
+"Well, then, he isn't married, Miss Maud, and he is a great catch!"
+
+Miss Maud blushed a trifle.
+
+"I don't know if you know it," she said, "but I have made a profound
+study of palmistry. Will you lend me your hand a moment?"
+
+"Very willingly. And I don't care if some one were to see us."
+
+She studied his palm with great sternness.
+
+"I read here," she said, "with regret, that you are an outrageous flirt.
+It seems also that you are something of a fraud."
+
+"One more calumny," exclaimed Mr. Langham, "and I withdraw my hand with
+a gesture of supreme indignation."
+
+But she held him very tightly by the fingers.
+
+"And this little line," she cried, "tells me that you have known Colonel
+Meredith intimately for years and that you never studied handwriting in
+all your born days."
+
+Mr. Langham began to chuckle all over.
+
+"The next time," he said, "that people tell me you are easily imposed
+on, I shall deny it."
+
+"You _do_ know him?"
+
+He blinked and nodded like a wise owl.
+
+"Shall I write or telegraph?"
+
+"You will use your own judgment."
+
+So she did both. She wrote out a telegram and sent it to Carrytown in
+the _Streak_. And she tried to picture in her mind a young man who
+should look like an angel if his eyes weren't too bold and roving.
+
+Her sisters and her brother all proclaimed that Maud was a really
+sensible person. But none of them knew how really sensible she was.
+
+She was, for instance, more interested in Colonel Meredith than in his
+cousin Mr. Jonstone, and for the simple reason that she knew the one to
+be rich and handsome and knew nothing whatever about the other.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Mr. Langham was at the float to welcome the two Carolinians.
+
+"You have," he complimented Colonel Meredith, "once more proved the
+ability to land on your feet in a soft spot. You will be more
+comfortable here, better fed, better laundered than anywhere else in the
+world."
+
+As they strolled from the float to the office, Mr. Jonstone looked about
+him a little uneasily. Not one of the beautiful girls who had looked
+into his eyes from the page of _The Four Seasons_ was in sight, or,
+indeed, any girl, woman, or female of any sort whatever. He had led
+himself to expect a resort crowded with rustling and starchy boarders.
+He found himself, instead, in a primeval pine forest in which were
+sheltered many low, austere buildings of logs, above whose great
+chimneys stood vertical columns of pale smoke. It was not yet dusk, but
+the air among the long shadows had an icy quality and was heavily
+charged with the odor of balsam. It was difficult to believe the season
+summer, and Mr. Jonstone was reminded of December evenings in the
+Carolinas.
+
+"This is the office," said Mr. Langham, and he ushered them into the
+presence of a bright birch fire and Maud Darling. Each of the
+Carolinians drew a quick breath and bowed as if before royalty. Mr.
+Langham presented them to Miss Darling. She begged them to write their
+names in the guest book and to warm themselves at the fire.
+
+"And then," said Sam Langham, "I'll shake them up a cocktail and show
+them their house."
+
+"Are we to have a whole house to ourselves?" asked Colonel Meredith. He
+had not yet taken his eyes from Maud Darling's face.
+
+"It's only two rooms: bath, parlor, and piazza," she explained.
+
+"That last?" asked Mr. Jonstone.
+
+"It's the same thing as a 'poach,'" explained Mr. Langham with a sly
+twinkle in his eyes.
+
+"It's to sit on and enjoy the view from," added Maud.
+
+"But I don't want to admire the view," complained Colonel Meredith. "I
+want to lounge about the office. It's the prerogative of every American
+citizen to lounge about the office of his hotel."
+
+Colonel Meredith had yet to take his eyes from Maud Darling's face. And
+it was with protest written all over it that he at length followed his
+cousin and Mr. Langham into the open air.
+
+The three were presently sampling a cocktail of the latter's shaking in
+the latter's snug little house, and speech was loosened in their mouths.
+
+"Darling, _père_," explained Sam Langham, "went broke. He used to run
+this place as it is run now, with this difference: that in the old days
+he put up the money, while now it is the guests who pay. Two years ago
+the Miss Darling you just met was one of the greatest heiresses in
+America; now she keeps books and makes out bills."
+
+"And are there truly five others equally lovely?" asked Colonel
+Meredith.
+
+"Some people think that the oldest of the six is also the loveliest,"
+said Sam Langham, loyal to the choice of his own heart. "But they are
+all very lovely."
+
+To the Carolinians, warmed by Langham's cocktail, it seemed pitiful that
+six beautiful girls who had had so much should now have so little. And
+with a little encouragement they would have been moved to the expression
+of exaggerated sentiments. It was Maud, however, and not the others,
+who had aroused these feelings in their breasts. The desire to benefit
+her by some secret action--and then to be found out--was very strong in
+them both.
+
+Langham left them after a time and they began to dress for dinner.
+Usually they had a great deal to say to each other; often they disputed
+and were gorgeously insolent to each other about the most trifling
+things, but on the present occasion their one desire was to dress as
+rapidly as possible and to visit the office upon some pretext or other.
+
+When Colonel Meredith from the engulfment of a starched shirt announced
+that he had several letters to write and wondered where one could buy
+postage-stamps, it afforded Bob Jonstone malicious satisfaction to
+inform him that the "little drawer in their writing-table contained not
+only plenty of twos but fives and a strip of special deliveries."
+
+"All I have to think about," said he, "is my laundry. I suppose they can
+tell me at the office."
+
+"_They?_" exclaimed Colonel Meredith.
+
+As he spoke the collar button sprang like a slippery cherry-stone from
+between his thumb and forefinger, fell in the exact middle of the room
+in a perfectly bare place, and disappeared. Up to this moment the
+cousins had remained on even terms in the race to be dressed first. But
+now Mr. Jonstone gained and, before the collar button was found, had
+given a parting "slick" to his hair and gone out.
+
+It was now dark, and the woodland streets of The Camp were lighted by
+lanterns. Windows were bright-yellow rectangles. A wind had risen and
+the lake could be heard slapping against the rocky shore.
+
+Maud Darling had left the office long enough to change from tailor-made
+tweeds to the simplest white muslin. She was adding up a column in a fat
+book. She looked golden in the firelight and the lamplight, and
+resembled some heavenly being but for the fact that, for the moment, she
+was puzzled to discover the sum of seven and five and was biting the end
+of her pencil. The divine muse of Inspiration lives in the "other" ends
+of pens and pencils. The world owes many of its masterpieces of
+literature and invention to reflective nibbling at these instruments,
+and if I were a teacher I should think twice before I told my pupils to
+take their pencils out of their mouths.
+
+Mr. Jonstone knocked on the open door of the office.
+
+"This is the office," said Miss Maud Darling; "you don't have to knock.
+Is anything not right?"
+
+"Everything is absolutely perfect," bowed Mr. Jonstone. "But you are
+busy. I could come again. I only wanted to ask about sending some things
+to a laundry."
+
+"You're not supposed to think about that," said Maud. "There is a
+clothes-bag in the big closet in your bedroom and my sister Eve does the
+rest."
+
+"Oh, but I couldn't allow----"
+
+"Not with her own hands, of course; she merely oversees the laundry and
+keeps it up to the mark. But if you like your things to be done in any
+special way you must see her and explain."
+
+"In my home," said Jonstone, "my old mammy does all the washing and most
+everything else, and I wouldn't dare to find fault. She would follow me
+up-stairs and down scolding all the time if I did. You see, though she
+isn't a slave any more, she's never had any wages, and so she takes it
+out in privileges and prerogatives."
+
+"No wages ever since the Civil War!" exclaimed Maud.
+
+"We had to have servants," he explained, "and until the other day there
+was never any money to pay them with. We had nothing but the plantation
+and the family silver."
+
+"And of course you couldn't part with that. In the North when we get
+hard up we sell anything we've got. But in the South you don't, and I've
+always admired that trait in you beyond measure."
+
+"In that case," said Mr. Jonstone, turning a little pale, "it is my duty
+to tell you that the other day I parted with my silver in exchange for a
+large sum of money. I made up my mind that I had only one life to live
+and that I was sick of being poor."
+
+Maud smiled.
+
+"If you want to keep your ill-gotten gains," she said, "you ought never
+to have come to this place. Wasn't there some kind friend to tell you
+that our prices are absolutely prohibitive? We haven't gone into
+business for fun but with the intention of making money hand over fist.
+It's only fair to warn you."
+
+She imagined that, at the outside, he might have received a couple of
+thousand dollars for his family silver, and it seemed wicked that he
+should be allowed to part with this little capital for food, lodging,
+and a little trout-fishing.
+
+"My silver," he said, "turned out to be worth a lot of money, and I have
+put it all in trust for myself, so that my wife and children shall never
+want."
+
+A flicker of disappointment appeared in Maud Darling's eyes.
+
+"But I didn't know you were married," she said lamely.
+
+"Oh, I'm not--yet!" he exclaimed joyfully. "But I mean to be."
+
+"Engaged?" she asked.
+
+"Hope to be--mean to be," he confessed.
+
+And at this moment Colonel Melville Meredith came in out of the night.
+Having bowed very low to Miss Darling, he turned to his cousin.
+
+"Did Langham find you?" he asked.
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, he's a-waiting at our house. I said I thought you'd be right
+back."
+
+"Then we--" began Jonstone.
+
+"Not we--_you_," said his cousin, malice in his eyes. "I want to ask
+Miss Darling some questions about telegrams and special messages by
+telephone."
+
+Bob Jonstone withdrew himself with the utmost reluctance.
+
+"We have a telephone that connects us with the telegraph office at
+Carrytown," Maud began, but Colonel Meredith interrupted almost rudely.
+
+"We engaged our rooms for ten days only," he said, "but I want to keep
+them for the rest of the summer. Please don't tell me that they are
+promised to some one else."
+
+"But they are," said she; "I'm very sorry."
+
+"Can't you possibly keep us?"
+
+She shook her fine head less in negation than reflection.
+
+"I don't see how," she said finally, "unless some one gives out at the
+last minute. There are just so many rooms and just so many applicants."
+
+"How long," he asked, "would it take to build a little house for my
+cousin and me?"
+
+"If we got all the carpenters from Carrytown," said Maud, "it could be
+done very quickly. But----"
+
+"Now you are going to make some other objection!"
+
+"I was only going to say that if you wanted to go camping for a few
+weeks, we could supply you with everything needful. We have first-rate
+tents for just that sort of thing."
+
+"But we don't want to go camping. We want to stay here."
+
+"Exactly. There is no reason why you shouldn't pitch your tent in the
+main street of this camp and live in it."
+
+"That's just what we'll do," said Colonel Meredith, "and to-morrow we'll
+pick out the site for the tent--if you'll help us."
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+Early the next morning Colonel Meredith and his cousin Bob Jonstone
+presented themselves at the office dressed for walking. Butter would not
+have melted in their mouths.
+
+"Can you come now and help us pick out a site for the tent?" asked the
+youthful colonel.
+
+Maud was rather busy that morning, but she closed her ledger, selected a
+walking-stick, and smiled her willingness to aid them.
+
+"It will seem more like real camping-out," said Mr. Jonstone, "if we
+don't pitch our tent right in the midst of things. Suppose we take a
+boat and row along the shores of the lake, keeping our eyes peeled."
+
+Maud was not averse to going for a row with two handsome and agreeable
+young men. They selected a guide boat and insisted on helping her in and
+cautioning her about sitting in the middle. Maud had almost literally
+been brought up in a guide boat, but she only smiled discreetly. The
+cousins matched for places. As Maud sat in the stern with a paddle for
+steering, Colonel Meredith, who won the toss, elected to row stroke. Bob
+Jonstone climbed with gingerness and melancholy into the bow. Not only
+was he a long way from that beautiful girl, but Meredith's head and
+shoulders almost completely blanketed his view of her.
+
+"We ought to row English style," he said.
+
+"What is English style, and why ought we to row that way?"
+
+"In the American shells," explained Jonstone, "the men sit in the
+middle. In the English shells each man sits as far from his rowlock as
+possible."
+
+"Why?" asked Meredith, who understood his cousin's predicament
+perfectly.
+
+"So's to get more leverage," explained Jonstone darkly.
+
+"It's for Miss Darling to say," said Meredith. "Which style do you
+prefer, Miss Darling, English or American?"
+
+"I think the American will be more comfortable for you both and safer
+for us all," said she.
+
+"There!" exclaimed the man of war, "what did I tell you?"
+
+"But--" continued Maud.
+
+"I could have told you there would be a 'but,'" interrupted Jonstone
+triumphantly.
+
+"But," repeated Maud, "I'm coxswain, and I want to see what every man in
+my boat is doing."
+
+So they rowed English style.
+
+"It's like a dinner-party," explained Maud to Colonel Meredith, who
+appeared slightly discomforted. "Don't you know how annoying it is when
+there's a tall centrepiece and you can't see who's across the table from
+you?"
+
+"Even if you don't want to look at him when you have found out who he
+is," agreed Meredith. "Exactly."
+
+They came to a bold headland of granite crowned with a half-dozen old
+pines that leaned waterward.
+
+"That's rather a wonderful site, I think," said Maud.
+
+"Where?" said the gentlemen, turning to look over their shoulders. Then,
+"It looks well enough from the water," said Jonstone, "but we ought not
+to choose wildly."
+
+"Let us land," said Colonel Meredith, "and explore."
+
+They landed and began at once to find reasons for pitching the tent on
+the promontory and reasons for not pitching it.
+
+"The site is open and airy," said Jonstone.
+
+"It is," said Colonel Meredith. "But, in case of a southwest gale, our
+tent would be blown inside out."
+
+A moment later, "How about drinking-water?" asked the experienced
+military man.
+
+"I regret to say that I have just stepped into a likely spring," said
+Jonstone.
+
+"We must sit down and wait till it clears."
+
+When the spring once more bubbled clean and undefiled Mr. Jonstone
+scooped up two palmfuls of water and drank.
+
+"Delicious!" he cried.
+
+Colonel Meredith then sampled the spring and shook his head darkly.
+
+"This spring has a main attribute of drinking-water," he said; "it is
+wet. Otherwise----"
+
+"What's the matter with my spring?" demanded his cousin.
+
+"Silica, my dear fellow--silica. And you know very well that silica to a
+man of your inherited tendencies spells gout."
+
+Jonstone nodded gravely.
+
+"I'm afraid that settles it." And he turned to Maud Darling. "I can keep
+clear of gout," he explained, "only just as long as I keep my system
+free from silica."
+
+"Do you usually manage to?" asked Maud, very much puzzled.
+
+"So far," he said, "I have _always_ managed to."
+
+"Then you have never suffered from gout?"
+
+"Never. But now, having drunk at this spring, I have reason to fear the
+worst. It will take at least a week to get that one drink out of my
+system."
+
+And so they passed from the promontory with the pine-trees to a little
+cove with a sandy beach, from this to a wooded island not much bigger
+than a tennis-court. In every suggested site Jonstone found
+multitudinous charms and advantages, while Colonel Meredith, from the
+depths of his military experience, produced objections of the first
+water. For to be as long as possible in the company of that beautiful
+girl was the end which both sought.
+
+Maud had gone upon the expedition in good faith, but when its true
+object dawned upon her she was not in the least displeased. The very
+obvious worship which the Carolinians had for her beauty was not so
+personal as to make her uncomfortable. It was rather the worship of two
+artists for art itself than for a particular masterpiece. Of the six
+beautiful Darlings Maud had had the least experience of young men. She
+was given to fits of shyness which passed with some as reserve, with
+others as a kind of common-sense and matter-of-fact way of looking at
+life. The triplets, young as they were, surpassed the other three in
+conquests and experience. And this was not because they were more lovely
+and more charming but because they had been a little spoiled by their
+father and brought into the limelight before their time. Furthermore,
+with the exception of Phyllis, perhaps, they were maidens of action to
+whom there was no recourse in books or reflection. Such accomplishments
+as drawing and music had not been forced upon them. They could not have
+made a living teaching school. But Lee and Gay certainly could have
+taught the young idea how to shoot, how to throw a fly, and how to come
+in out of the wet when no house was handy. As for Phyllis, she would
+have been as like them as one pea is like two others but for the fact
+that at the age of two she had succeeded in letting off a 45-90 rifle
+which some fool had left about loaded and had thereby frightened her
+early sporting promises to death. But it was only of weapons, squirming
+fish, boats, and thunder storms that she was shy. Young gentlemen had no
+terrors for her, and she preferred the stupidest of these to the
+cleverest of books.
+
+Mary, Maud, and Eve had wasted a great part of their young lives upon
+education. They could play the piano pretty well (you couldn't tell
+which was playing); they sang charmingly; they knew French and German;
+they could spell English, and even speak it correctly, a power which
+they had sometimes found occasion to exercise when in the company of
+foreign diplomatists. The change in their case from girlhood to young
+womanhood had been sudden and prearranged: in each case a tremendous
+ball upon a given date. The triplets had never "come out."
+
+If Lee or Gay had been the victim of the present conspiracy, the
+gentlemen from Carolina would have found their hands full and
+overflowing. They would have been teased and misconstrued within an inch
+of their lives; but Maud Darling was genuinely moved by the candor and
+chivalry of their combined attentions. There was a genuine joyousness in
+her heart, and she did not care whether they got her home in time for
+lunch or not. And it was only a strong sense of duty which caused her to
+point out the high position attained by the sun in the heavens.
+
+With reluctance the trio gave up the hopeless search for a camp site and
+started for home upon a long diagonal across the lake. It was just then,
+as if a signal had been given, that the whole surface of the lake became
+ruffled as when a piece of blue velvet is rubbed the wrong way, and a
+strong wind began to blow in Maud's face and upon the backs of the
+rowers.
+
+Several hours of steady rowing had had its effect upon unaccustomed
+hands. It was now necessary to pull strongly, and blisters grew swiftly
+from small beginnings and burst in the palms of the Carolinians. Maud
+came to their rescue with her steering paddle, but the wind, bent upon
+having sport with them, sounded a higher note, and the guide boat no
+longer seemed quick to the least propulsion and light on the water, but
+as if blunt forward, high to the winds, and half full of stones. She did
+not run between strokes but came to dead stops, and sometimes, during
+strong gusts, actually appeared to lose ground.
+
+The surface of the lake didn't as yet testify truly to the full strength
+of the wind. But soon the little waves grew taller, the intervals
+between them wider, and their crests began to be blown from them in
+white spray. The heavens darkened more and more, and to the northeast
+the sky-line was gradually blotted out as if by soft gray smoke.
+
+"We're going to have rain," said Maud, "and we're going to have fog. So
+we'd better hurry a little."
+
+"Hurry?" thought the Carolinians sadly. And they redoubled their
+efforts, with the result that they began to catch crabs.
+
+"Some one ought to see us and send a launch," said Maud.
+
+At that moment, as the wind flattens a field of wheat to the ground, the
+waves bent and lay down before a veritable blast of black rain. It would
+have taken more than human strength to hold the guide boat to her
+course. Maud paddled desperately for a quarter of a minute and gave up.
+The boat swung sharply on her keel, rocked dangerously, and, once more
+light and sentient, a creature of life, made off bounding before the
+gale.
+
+"We are very sorry," said the Carolinians, "but the skin is all off our
+hands, and at the best we are indifferent boatmen."
+
+"The point is this," said Maud: "Can you swim?"
+
+"I can," said Colonel Meredith, "but I am extremely sorry to confess
+that my cousin's aquatic education has been neglected. Where he lives
+every pool contains crocodiles, leeches, snapping-turtles, and
+water-moccasins, and the incentive to bathing for pleasure is slight."
+
+"Don't worry about me," said Mr. Jonstone. "I can cling to the boat
+until the millennium."
+
+"We shan't upset--probably," said Maud. "It will be better if you two
+sit in the bottom of the boat. I'll try to steer and hold her steady.
+This isn't the first time I've been blown off shore and then on shore. I
+suppose I ought to apologize for the weather, but it really isn't my
+fault. Who would have thought this morning that we were in for a storm?"
+
+"If only you don't mind," said Colonel Meredith. "It's all _our_ fault.
+You probably didn't want to come. You just came to be friendly and kind,
+and now you are hungry and wet to the skin----"
+
+"But," interrupted Bob Jonstone, "if only you will forget all that and
+think what pleasure we are having."
+
+"I can't hear what you say," called Maud.
+
+"I beg your pardon," shouted Mr. Jonstone. "I didn't quite catch that.
+What did Miss Darling say, Mel?"
+
+"She said she wanted to talk to me and for you to shut up."
+
+Mr. Jonstone made a playful but powerful swing at his cousin, and the
+guide boat, as if suddenly tired of her passengers, calmly upset and
+spilled them out.
+
+A moment later the true gallantry of Mr. Bob Jonstone showed forth in
+glorious colors. Having risen to the surface and made good his hold upon
+the overturned boat, he proposed very humbly, as amends for causing the
+accident, to let go and drown.
+
+"If you do," said Maud, excitement overcoming her sense of the
+ridiculous, "I'll never speak to you again."
+
+Colonel Meredith opened his mouth to laugh and closed it a little
+hastily on about a pint of water.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+The water was so rough, the weather so thick, and their point of view so
+very low down in the world that Maud and the Carolinians could neither
+see the shore from which they had departed nor that toward which they
+were slowly drifting. The surface water was warm, however, owing to a
+week of sunshine, and it was not necessary to drop one's legs into the
+icy stratum beneath.
+
+It is curious that what the three complained of the most was the
+incessant, leaden rain. Their faces were colder than their bodies. They
+admitted that they had never been so wet in all their lives. Maud and
+Colonel Meredith, not content with the slow drifting, kicked vigorously;
+but Bob Jonstone had all he could do to cling to the guide boat and keep
+his head above water. His legs had a way of suddenly rising toward the
+surface and wrapping themselves half around the submerged boat. An
+effort was made to right the boat and bale her out. But Maud's
+water-soaked skirt and a sudden case of rattles on the part of Jonstone
+prevented the success of the manoeuvre.
+
+Half an hour passed.
+
+"Personally," said Jonstone, "I've had about enough of this."
+
+His clinging hands looked white and thin; the knuckles were beginning to
+turn blue. He had a drawn expression about the mouth, but his eyes were
+bright and resolute.
+
+"I've always understood," said Colonel Meredith, "that girls suffer less
+than men from total submersion in cold water. I sincerely hope, Miss
+Darling, that this is so."
+
+"Oh, I'm not suffering," said she; "not yet. My father used to let us go
+in sometimes when there was a skin of ice along shore. So please don't
+worry about me."
+
+Mr. Jonstone's teeth began to chatter very steadily and loudly. And just
+then Maud raised herself a little, craned her neck, and had a glimpse of
+the shore--a long, half-submerged point, almost but not quite
+obliterated by the fog and the splashing rain.
+
+"Land ho!" said she joyfully. "All's well. There's a big shallow off
+here; we'll be able to wade in a minute."
+
+And, indeed, in less than a minute Bob Jonstone's feet found the hard
+sand bottom. And in a very short time three shipwrecked mariners had
+waded ashore and dragged the guide boat into a clump of bushes.
+
+"And now what?" asked Colonel Meredith.
+
+"And now," said Maud, "the luck has changed. Half a mile from here is a
+cave where we used to have picnics. There's an axe there, matches, and
+probably a tin of cigarettes, and possibly things to eat. It's all
+up-hill from here, and if you two follow me and keep up, you'll be warm
+before we get there."
+
+Her wet clothes clung to her, and she went before them like some swift
+woodland goddess. Their spirits rose, and with them their voices, so
+that the deer and other animals of the neighboring woods were disturbed
+and annoyed in the shelters which they had chosen from the rain.
+Sometimes Maud ran; sometimes she merely moved swiftly; but now and then
+while the way was still among the dense waterside alders, she broke her
+way through with fine strength, reckless of scratches.
+
+The following Carolinians began to worship the ground she trod and to
+stumble heavily upon it. They were not used to walking. It had always
+been their custom to go from place to place upon horses. They panted
+aloud. They began to suspect themselves of heart trouble, and they had
+one heavy fall apiece.
+
+Suddenly Maud came to a dead stop.
+
+"I smell smoke," she said. "Some one is here before us. That's good
+luck, too."
+
+She felt her way along the face of a great bowlder and was seen to enter
+the narrow mouth of a cave.
+
+"Who's here?" she called cheerfully.
+
+The passageway into the cave twisted like the letter S so that you came
+suddenly upon the main cavity. This--a space as large as a
+ball-room--had a smooth floor of sand, broken by one or two ridges of
+granite. At the farther end burned a bright fire, most of whose smoke
+after slow, aimless drifting was strongly sucked upward through a hole
+in the roof. Closely gathered about this fire were four men, who looked
+like rather dissolute specimens of the Adirondack guide, and a young
+woman with an old face. Maud's quick eyes noted two rusty Winchester
+rifles, a leather mail-bag, and the depressing fact that the men had not
+shaved for many days.
+
+It is always awkward to enter your own private cave and find it occupied
+by strangers.
+
+"You mustn't mind," said Maud, smiling upon them, "if we share the
+fire. It's really our cave and our fire-wood."
+
+"Sorry, miss," said one of the men gruffly, "but when it comes on to
+rain like this a man makes bold of any shelter that offers."
+
+"Of course," said Maud. "I'm glad you did. We'll just dry ourselves and
+go."
+
+She seated herself with a Carolinian on either side, and their clothes
+began to send up clouds of steam.
+
+The young woman with the old face, having devoured Maud with hungry, sad
+eyes, spoke in a shy, colorless voice.
+
+"It would be better, miss, if you was to let the boys go outside. I
+could lend you my blanket while your clothes dried."
+
+"That's very good of you," said Maud, "but I'm very warm and comfortable
+and drying out nicely."
+
+One of the men rose, grinned awkwardly, and said:
+
+"I'll just have a look at the weather." With affected carelessness he
+caught up one of the Winchesters and passed from sight toward the
+entrance of the cave. This manoeuvre seemed to have a cheering effect
+upon the other three.
+
+"What do you find to shoot at this time of year?" asked Maud, and she
+smiled with great innocence.
+
+"The game-laws," said the man who had spoken first, "weren't written for
+poor men."
+
+"Don't tell me," exclaimed Maud, "that you've got a couple of partridges
+or even venison just waiting to be cooked and eaten!"
+
+"No such luck," said the man.
+
+Neither of the Carolinians had spoken. They steamed pleasantly and
+appeared to be looking for pictures in the hot embers. Their eyes seemed
+to have sunk deeper into their skulls. Men who were familiar with them
+would have known that they were very angry about something and as
+dangerous as a couple of rattlesnakes. After a long while they exchanged
+a few words in low voices and a strange tongue. It was the dialect of
+the Sea Island negroes--the purest African grafted on English so pure
+that nobody speaks it nowadays.
+
+"What say?" asked one of the strangers roughly.
+
+Colonel Meredith turned his eyes slowly upon the speaker.
+
+"I remarked to my cousin," said he icily, "that in our part of the world
+even the lowest convict knows enough to rise to his feet when a lady
+enters the room and to apologize for being alive."
+
+"In the North Woods," said the man sulkily, "no one stands on ceremony.
+If you don't like our manners, Mr. Baltimore Oriole, you can lump 'em,
+see?"
+
+"I see," said Colonel Meredith quietly, "that that leather mail-bag over
+there belongs to the United States Government. And I have a strong
+suspicion, my man, that you and your allies were concerned in the late
+hold-up perpetrated on the Montreal express. And I shall certainly make
+it my business to report you as suspicious characters to the proper
+authorities."
+
+"That'll be too easy," said the man. "And suppose we was what you think,
+what would we be doing in the meantime? I ask you _what_?"
+
+Mr. Jonstone interrupted in a soft voice.
+
+"Oh, quit blustering and threatening," he said.
+
+"Say," said a man who had not yet spoken, "do you two sprigs of jasmine
+ever patronize the 'movies'? And, if so, did you ever look your fill on
+a film called 'Held for Ransom'? You folks has a look of being kind o'
+well to do, and it looks to me as if you'd have to pay for it."
+
+"Why quarrel with them?" said Maud, with gravity and displeasure in her
+voice, but no fear. "Things are bad enough as they are. I saw that the
+minute we came in. Just one minute too late, it seems."
+
+"That's horse-sense," admitted one of the men. "And when this rain holds
+up, one of us will take a message to your folks saying as how you are
+stopping at an expensive hotel and haven't got money enough to pay your
+bill."
+
+"And that," said Colonel Meredith, "will only leave three of you to
+guard us. Once," he turned to Maud, "I spent six hours in a Turkish
+prison."
+
+"What happened?" she asked.
+
+"I didn't like it," he said, "and left."
+
+"This ain't Turkey, young feller, and we ain't Turks. If you don't like
+the cave you can lump it, but you can't leave."
+
+"We don't intend to leave till it stops raining," put in Mr. Jonstone
+sweetly.
+
+"Miss Darling," said Colonel Meredith, "you don't feel chilled, do you?
+You mustn't take this adventure seriously. These people are desperate
+characters, but they haven't the mental force to be dangerous. It will
+be the greatest pleasure in the world both to my cousin and myself to
+see that no harm befalls you." He turned once more to the unshaven men
+about the fire.
+
+"Have you got anything worth while in that mail-bag?" he asked. "I read
+that the safe in the Montreal express only contained a few hundred
+dollars. Hardly worth risking prison for--was it?"
+
+"We'll have enough to risk prison for before we get through with you."
+
+"You might if you managed well, because I am a rich man. But you are
+sure to bungle."
+
+He turned to the woman and asked with great kindness:
+
+"Is it their first crime?"
+
+"Yes, sir," she said. "Mr.----"
+
+"Shut up!" growled one of her companions.
+
+"A gentleman from New York turned us out of the woods so's he could have
+them all to himself and after we'd spent all our money on lawyers. So my
+husband and the boys allowed they had about enough of the law. And so
+they held up the express, but it was more because they were mad clear
+through than because they are bad, and now it's too late, and--and----"
+
+Here she began to cry.
+
+"It's never too late to mend," said Maud.
+
+"Have you spent any of the money they took?" asked Colonel Meredith.
+
+"No, sir; we haven't had a chance. We've got every dime of it."
+
+"Did you own the land you were driven off?"
+
+"No, sir, but we'd always lived on it, and it did seem as if we ought to
+be left in peace----"
+
+"To shoot out of season, to burn other people's wood, trap their fish,
+and show your teeth at them when they came to take what belonged to
+them? I congratulate you. You are American to the backbone. And now you
+propose to take my money away from me."
+
+Colonel Meredith turned to his cousin, after excusing himself to Maud,
+and they conversed for some time in their strange Sea Island dialect.
+
+"Can that gibberish," said one of the train robbers suddenly. "I'm sick
+of it."
+
+"We shan't trouble you with it again, as we've already decided what to
+do."
+
+The robber laughed mockingly.
+
+"In view of your extreme youth," said Colonel Meredith sweetly, "in view
+of the fact that you are also young in crime and that one member of your
+party is a woman, we have decided to help you along the road to reform.
+In my State there is considerable lawlessness; from this has evolved the
+useful custom of going heeled."
+
+He spoke, and a blue automatic flashed cruelly in his white hand. His
+action was as sudden and unexpected as the striking of a rattlesnake.
+
+"All hands up," he commanded.
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"You've got us," said the youngest of the robbers sheepishly. "How about
+the man on guard with a Winchester?"
+
+"My cousin Mr. Jonstone will bring him in to join the conference. And,
+meanwhile, I shall have to ask the ladies to look the other way while my
+cousin changes clothes with one of you gentlemen."
+
+Of the three villains, Jonstone selected the youngest and the tidiest,
+and with mutual reluctance, suspicion, and startled glances toward where
+the ladies sat with averted faces, they changed clothes.
+
+A broad felt hat, several sizes too big for him, added the touch of
+completion to the Carolinian's transformation. He took the spare
+Winchester and, without a word, walked quietly toward the mouth of the
+cave and was lost to sight.
+
+Maud did not breathe freely until he had returned, unhurt, carrying both
+Winchesters and driving an exceedingly sheepish backwoodsman before him.
+
+He expressed the wish to resume his own clothes. This done, he and his
+cousin broke into good-natured, boyish laughter.
+
+The oldest and most sheepish of the backwoods-men kept repeating, "Who
+would 'a' thought he'd have a pistol on him!" and seemed to find a world
+of comfort in the thought.
+
+"What are you going to do with them?" Maud asked almost in a whisper. "I
+think I feel a little sorry for them."
+
+"Bob!" exclaimed Colonel Meredith.
+
+"What?"
+
+"_She_ feels a little sorry for them. Don't you?"
+
+"Yes, _sir_!" replied Mr. Jonstone fervently.
+
+Colonel Meredith addressed himself to the young woman with the old face.
+
+"Do you believe in fairies?" he asked.
+
+She only looked pathetic and confused.
+
+"Miss Darling, here," he went on, "is a fairy. She left her wand at
+home, but if she wants to she can make people's wishes come true. Now
+suppose you and your friends talk things over and decide upon some
+sensible wishes to have granted. Of course, it's no use wishing you
+hadn't robbed a train; but you could wish that the money would be
+returned, and that the police could be induced to stop looking for you,
+and that some one could come along and offer you an honest way of making
+a living. So you talk it over a while and then tell us what you'd
+like."
+
+"Aren't you going to give us up?" asked one of the men.
+
+"Not if you've any sense at all."
+
+"Then I guess there's no use us talking things over. And if the young
+lady is a fairy, we'd be obliged if she'd get busy along the lines
+you've just laid down."
+
+All eyes were turned on Maud. And she looked appealingly from Colonel
+Meredith to Mr. Jonstone and back again.
+
+"What ought I to say? What ought I to promise? _Can_ the money be
+returned? Can the police be called off? And if I only had some work to
+give them, but over at The Camp----"
+
+"Every good fairy," said Colonel Meredith, "has two helpers to whom all
+things are possible."
+
+"Truly?"
+
+The Carolinians sprang to their feet, clicked their heels together into
+the first position of dancing, laid their right hands over their hearts,
+and bowed very low.
+
+"Then," said Maud laughing, "I should like the money to be returned."
+
+"I will attend to that," said Colonel Meredith.
+
+"And the police to be called off."
+
+Again the soldier assumed responsibility.
+
+"But who," she asked, "will find work for them?"
+
+"I will," said Mr. Jonstone. "They shall build the house for my cousin
+and me to live in. You can build a house, can't you? A log house?"
+
+"But where will you build it?" asked Maud. "You found fault with all the
+best sites on the lake."
+
+"The very first site we visited suited us to perfection."
+
+"But you said the spring contained cyanide or something."
+
+"We were talking through our hats."
+
+"But why----"
+
+The Carolinians gazed at her with a kind of beseeching ardor, until she
+understood that they had only found fault with one promising building
+site after another in order that they might pass the longest time
+possible in her company.
+
+And she returned their glance with one in which there was some feeling
+stronger than mere amusement.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+Concerning information, Mark Twain wrote that it appeared to stew out of
+him naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter. With
+the narrator of this episodical history, however, things are very
+different. And just how the good fairy, Maud Darling, was enabled to
+keep her promises to the outlaws seems to him of no great moment. But
+the money _was_ returned to the express company; the police _were_
+called off; and the four robbers, with the woman to cook for them, went
+to work at building a log house on the point of pines to be occupied in
+the near future by the Carolinians.
+
+They were not sorry to have been turned from a life of sin. It is only
+when a life of sin is gilded, padded, and pleasant that people hate to
+turn from it. When virtue entails being rained on, starved, and hunted,
+it isn't a very pleasant way of life, either.
+
+The face of the young female bandit lost its look of premature old age.
+She went about her work singing, and the humming of the kettle was her
+accompaniment. The four men looked the other men of the camp in the face
+and showed how to lay trees by the heels in record time. To their
+well-swung and even better-sharpened axes even the stems of oaks were as
+wax candles. It became quite "the thing" for guests at The Camp to go
+out to the point and admire the axe-work and all the processes of
+frontier house-building.
+
+When people speak of "love in a cottage," there rises nearly always, in
+my mind, the memory of a log house that a friend of mine and I came
+across by the headwaters of a great river in Canada.
+
+It stood--the axe marks crisp, white, and blistered with pitch--upon the
+brink of a swirling brown pool full of grilse. The logs of which it was
+built had been dragged from a distance, so that in the immediate
+neighborhood of the cabin was no desolation of dead tree-tops and dying
+stumps. Everything was wonderfully neat, new, and in order. About the
+pool and the cabin the maples had turned yellow and vermilion. And above
+was the peaceful pale blue of an Indian-summer sky.
+
+We opened the door, held by a simple latch, and found ourselves in the
+pleasantest of rooms, just twenty feet by fifteen. The walls and the
+floor had been much whitened and smoothed by the axe. The place smelt
+vaguely of pitch and strongly of balsam. There was a fireplace--the fire
+all laid, a bunk to lie on, a chair to sit on, a table to write on, a
+broom to sweep with. And neatly set upon clean shelves were various jams
+in glass, and meats, biscuits, and soups in tins. There was also a
+writing (on birch bark) over the shelves, which read: "Help yourself."
+
+We took down the shutters from the windows and let in floods of autumn
+sun. Then we lighted the fire, and ate crackers and jam.
+
+It hurt a little to learn at the mouth of our guide that the cabin
+belonged to a somewhat notorious and decidedly crotchety New York
+financier who controlled the salmon-fishing in those waters. I had
+pictured it as built for a pair of eminently sensible and supernaturally
+romantic honeymooners or for a poet. And I wanted to carry away that
+impression. For in such a place love or inspiration must have lasted
+just as long as the crackers and jam. And there is no more to be said of
+a palace.
+
+One day Mary Darling and Sam Langham visited the new cabin. And Sam
+said: "If one of the happy pair happened to know something of cooking,
+what a place for a honeymoon!"
+
+Shortly afterward, Phyllis and Herring came that way, and Herring said:
+"If I was in love, and knew how to use an axe, I'd build just such a
+house for the girl I love and make her live in it. I believe I will,
+anyway."
+
+"Believe what?" asked Phyllis demurely. "Believe you will make her live
+in it?"
+
+"Yes," he said darkly--"no matter who she is and no matter how afraid of
+the mice and spiders with which such places ultimately become infested."
+
+Lee and Renier visited the cabin, also. They remarked only that it had a
+wonderfully smooth floor, and proceeded at once thereon, Lee whistling
+exquisitely and with much spirit, to dance a maxixe, which was greatly
+admired by the ex-outlaws.
+
+Maud came often with the Carolinians, and as for Eve, she came once or
+twice all by herself.
+
+Jealousy is a horrid passion. It had never occurred to Eve Darling that
+she was or ever could be jealous of anybody. And she wasn't--exactly.
+But seeing her sisters always cavaliered by attractive men and slipping
+casually into thrilling and even dangerous adventures with them
+disturbed the depths of her equanimity. It was delightful, of course, to
+be made much of by Arthur and to go upon excursions with him as of old.
+But something was wanting. Arthur's idea of a pleasant day in the woods
+was to sit for hours by a pool and attempt to classify the croaks of
+frogs, or to lie upon his back in the sun and think about the girl in
+far-off China whom he loved so hopelessly.
+
+Thanks to her excellent subordinate, and to her own administrative
+ability, Laundry House made fewer and fewer encroachments upon Eve's
+leisure. And often she found that time was hanging upon her hands with
+great heaviness. Memory reminded her that things had not always been
+thus; for there are men in this world who think that she was the most
+beautiful of all the Darlings.
+
+It was curious that of all the men who had come to The Camp, Mr. Bob
+Jonstone had the most attraction for her. They had not spoken half a
+dozen times, and it was quite obvious that his mind, if not his heart,
+was wholly occupied with Maud. Wherever you saw Maud, you could be
+pretty sure that the Carolinians, hunting in a couple, were not far off.
+Of the two, Colonel Meredith was the more brilliant, the more showy, and
+the better-looking. Added to his good breeding and lazy, pleasant voice
+were certain Yankee qualities--a total lack of gullibility, a certain
+trace of mockery, even upon serious subjects. Mr. Jonstone, on the other
+hand, was a perfect lamb of earnestness and sincerity. If he heard of an
+injustice his eyes flamed, or if he listened to the recital of some
+pathetic happening they misted over. Once beyond the direct influence of
+his cousin there was neither mischief in him nor devilment. It was for
+this reason, and in this knowledge, that he had put his newly acquired
+moneys in trust for himself.
+
+In the little house by the lake where the cousins still slept,
+conversation seldom flagged before one or two o'clock in the morning.
+Having said good-night to each other at about eleven, one or the other
+was pretty sure to let out some new discovery about the Darlings in
+general and Maud Darling in particular, and then all desire for sleep
+vanished and their real cousinly confidences began.
+
+But these confidences had their limits, for neither confessed to being
+sentimentally interested in the young lady, whereas, within limits, they
+both were. And each enjoyed the satisfaction of believing (quite
+erroneously) that he deceived the other. I do not wish to convey the
+impression that they were actually in love with her.
+
+When you are really in love, you are also in love before breakfast.
+That is the final test. And when love begins to die, that is the time
+when its weakening pulse is first to be concerned. What honest man has
+not been mad about some pretty girl (in a crescendo of madness) from tea
+time till sleep time and waked in the morning with no thought but for
+toast and coffee the soonest possible? and gone about the business of
+the morning and early afternoon almost heart-whole and fancy-free, and
+relapsed once more into madness with the lengthening of the shadows? A
+man who proposes marriage to a girl until he has been in love with her
+for twenty-four consecutive hours is a light fellow who ought to be
+kicked out of the house by her papa. As for the girl, let her be sure
+that he is bread and meat to her, comfort and rest, demigod and man,
+wholly necessary and not to be duplicated in this world, before she even
+says that she will think about it.
+
+In the early morning there would arise in the house of the Carolinians
+the sounds of whistling, of singing, laughter, scuffling, and running
+water. So that a girl who really wanted either of them must, in
+listening, have despaired.
+
+As for Maud Darling, she was disgusted with herself--theoretically. But
+practically she was having the time of her life. In theory, she felt
+that no self-respecting girl ought to be unable to decide which of the
+two young men she liked the better. In practice, she found a constant
+pondering of this delicate question to be delightful. It was very
+comfortable to know that the moment she was free to play there were two
+pleasant companions ready and waiting.
+
+Sentiment and gayety attended their goings and comings. The Carolinians,
+fortified by each other's presence, were veritable Raleighs of
+extravagant devotion. In engineering, for instance, so that Maud should
+not have to step in a damp place, there were displayed enough gallantry
+and efficiency to have saved her from an onslaught of tigers. If the
+trio climbed a mountain, Maud gave herself up to the heart-warming
+delight of being helped when help was not in the least necessary. In
+short, she behaved as any natural young woman would, and should. She
+flirted outrageously. But in the depths of her heart a genuine
+friendship for the Carolinians was conceived and grew in breadth and
+strength. What if they did out-gallant gallantry?
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+One Sunday, Eve, from her window--she was rather a lazy girl that
+Sunday--witnessed the following departures from the camp. Sam Langham
+and Mary in a guide boat, with fishing-tackle and an immense hamper
+which looked like lunch. Herring and Phyllis could be seen hoisting the
+sails on the knockabout. Herring had never sailed a boat and was
+prepared to master that simple art at once. Lee and Renier were girt for
+the mountain. Renier appeared to have a Flobert rifle in semihiding
+under his coat, and it was to be feared that if he saw a partridge, he
+would open fire on it, close season though it was. He and Lee would
+justify this illegal act by cooking the bird for their lunch. Gay
+commandeered the _Streak_ and departed at high speed toward Carrytown.
+She had in one hand a sheet of blue-striped paper, folded. It resembled
+a cablegram. And Eve thought that it must be of a very private nature,
+or else Gay would have telephoned it to the Western Union office,
+instead of carrying it by hand. The next to depart from the camp was
+Arthur. He moved dreamily in a northwesterly direction, accompanied by
+Uncas, the chipmunk, and Wow, the dog. Other guests made departures.
+
+All of which Eve, half dressed and looking lazily from her window,
+lazily noted, remarking that for her Sunday was a day of rest and that
+she thanked Heaven for it. And she did not feel any differently until
+Maud and the Carolinians walked out on the float and began to pack a
+guide boat for the day.
+
+Then her lazy, complacent feelings departed, and were succeeded by a
+sudden, wide-awake surge of self-pity. She felt like Cinderella. Nobody
+had asked her to go anywhere or do anything, and nobody had even thought
+of doing so. When she was dead they would gather round her coffin and
+remember that they hadn't asked her to go anywhere or do anything, and
+they would be very sorry and ashamed and they would say what a nice girl
+she had been, and how she had always tried to give everybody a good
+time.
+
+Between laughter and tears and mortification, Eve finished dressing, set
+her lovely jaw, and went out into the delicious, cool calm of the
+mountain morning. She could still hear the voices of many of the
+departing ones; and the rattling and creaking of the knockabout's
+blocks and rigging. She heard Herring say to Phyllis: "I think it would
+be better if I could make the boom go out on this side, but I can't."
+Phyllis's answer was a cool, contented laugh. It was as if she said:
+"Hang the boom! _We're_ here!"
+
+Have you ever had the feeling that you would like to board a swift boat,
+head for the open sea, and never come back? Or that you could plunge
+into some boundless, trackless forest and keep straight on until you
+were lost, and died (beautifully and painlessly), and were covered with
+beautiful leaves by little birds?
+
+Eve enjoyed (and suffered from) a hint of this latter feeling. She ate a
+light breakfast (it would be better not to begin starving till she was
+actually lost in the boundless, trackless forest), selected a light,
+spiked climbing-stick with a crooked handle, headed for one of the
+northeasterly mountains, and was soon deep in the shade of the pines and
+hemlocks.
+
+After a few miles, the trail that she followed split and scattered in
+many directions, like the end of an unravelled rope. She followed an old
+lumber road for a long way, turned into another that crossed it at an
+angle of forty-five degrees, took no account of the sun's position in
+the heavens or of the marked sides of trees. If she came to a high
+place from which there was a view, she did not look at it. She just kept
+going--this way and that, up and down. In short, she made a conscious,
+anxious effort to lose herself. The easterly mountain toward which she
+had first headed kept bobbing up straight ahead. And always there was
+the knowledge in the back of her head of the exact location of The Camp,
+and of all the other landmarks, familiar to her since early youth.
+
+"Drag it!" she said, at length, her eyes on the mountain. "I'll climb
+the old thing, put melancholy aside, and call this a good, if
+unaccompanied, Sunday."
+
+The morning coolness had departed. It was one of those hot, breathless,
+mountain forenoons that kill the appetite and are usually followed,
+toward the late afternoon, by violent electrical disturbances.
+
+Eve was not as fit as she had supposed, or as she thought. As a matter
+of fact, she was setting too fast a pace, considering the weather and
+the angle of the mountain slope; and she was as wet as if she had played
+several hard sets of tennis with a partner who stood in one corner of
+the court and let her do all the running.
+
+As she climbed, reproaching her wind for being so short, she remembered
+that the hollow tip of this particular northeastern mountain was filled
+with a deep pool of water. Nobody had ever called it a lake. The map
+called it a pond; but it wasn't even that--it was a pool. Springs fed it
+just fast enough to make up for the evaporation. It had no outlet. It
+was shaped like a fat letter O. At one end was a little beach of white
+sand. Indeed, the bottom of the pool was all firm, smooth, and clean,
+and the whole charming little body of water was surrounded by thick
+groves of dwarf mountain trees and bushes. Not content with being a
+perfect replica, in miniature, of a full-grown Adirondack lake, this
+pool had in its midst an island, a dozen feet in diameter, densely
+shrubbed and shaded by one diminutive Japanesque pine.
+
+When Eve came to the pool, hot, tired, and rather bothered at the
+thought of the long walk back to camp, she had but the vaguest idea of
+just why the Lord had placed such a pool on top of a mountain, impelled
+her to climb that mountain, and made the day so piping hot.
+
+Eve stood a little on the sand beach. She felt hotter and hotter, and
+the pool looked cooler and cooler. Presently, a heavenly smile of
+solution brightened her flushed, warm face, and she withdrew into a
+shady clump of bushes. From this there came first the exclamation "Drag
+it!" then a sound of some sort of a string being sharply broken in two,
+and then there came from the clump of bushes Eve herself, looking for
+all the world like a slice of the silver moon.
+
+And as you may have seen the silver moon slip slowly into the sea, so
+Eve vanished slowly into the pool--all but her shapely little round
+head, with its crisp bright-brown hair and its lovely face, happy now,
+exhilarated, and eager as are the faces of adventurers.
+
+And Eve thought if one didn't have to eat, if one didn't end by being
+cold, if one could make time stand still--she would choose to be always
+and forever a slice of the silver moon, lolling in a mountain pool.
+
+She had the kind of hair that wets to perfection. But it was not the
+sort of permanent wave which lasts six months or so, costs twenty-five
+dollars, and is inculcated by hours of alternate baking and shampooing.
+Eve had always had a permanent wave. She feared neither fog nor rain,
+nor water in any form of application. And so it was that, now and then,
+as she lolled about the pool, she disappeared from one fortunate square
+yard of surface and reappeared in another.
+
+Half an hour had passed, when suddenly the mountain stillness was broken
+by men's voices.
+
+Eve was at the opposite side of the pool from where she had left her
+clothes. Between her and the approaching voices was the little island.
+She landed hastily upon this and hid herself among the bushes.
+
+Three gross, fat men and one long, lean man, with a face like leather
+and an Adam's apple that bobbed like a fisherman's float, came down to
+the beach, sweating terribly, and cast thereon knapsacks, picnic
+baskets, hatchets, fishing-tackle, and all the complicated paraphernalia
+of amateurs about to cook their own lunch in the woods.
+
+All but one had loud, coarse, carrying voices, and they all appeared to
+belong to the ruling class. They appeared, in short, to have neither
+education nor refinement nor charm nor anything to commend them as
+leaders or examples. Eve wondered how it was possible for them to find
+pleasure even in each other's company. They quarrelled, wrangled, found
+fault, abused each other, or suddenly forgot their differences,
+gathering about the fattest of the fat men and listening, almost
+reverently, while he told a story. When he had finished, they would
+throw their heads far back and scream with laughter. He must have told
+wonderfully funny stories; but his voice was no more than a husky
+whisper, so that Eve could not make head or tail of them.
+
+After a while the whispering fat man produced from one of the baskets
+four little glasses and a fat dark bottle. And shortly after there was
+less wrangling and more laughter.
+
+The thin man with the leathery face and the bobbing Adam's apple put a
+fishing-rod together, tied a couple of gaudy flies to his leader, and
+began to cast most unskilfully from the shores of the pool, moving along
+slowly from time to time.
+
+The fat men, occasionally calling to ask if he had caught anything,
+busied themselves with preparations for lunch. One of them made
+tremendous chopping sounds in the wood and furnished from time to time
+incommensurate supplies of fire-wood. Smoke arose and a kettle was
+slung.
+
+Meanwhile Eve, cowering among the bushes, for all the world like her
+famous ancestress when the angel came to the garden, did not quite know
+what to do. She had only to lift her voice and explain, and the men
+would go away for a time. She felt sure of that. She had been brought
+up to believe in the exquisite chivalry of the plain American man.
+
+But there was something about the four which repelled her, which stuck
+in her throat. She did not wish to be under any sort of obligation to
+any of them. And so she kept mousy-quiet, and turned over in her mind an
+immense number of worthless stratagems and expedients.
+
+Have you ever tried to lie on the lawn under a tree and read for an hour
+or two--incased in all your buffer of clothes? Try it some time--without
+the buffers. Try it in the buff. And then imagine how comfortable Eve
+was on the island. Imagine how soft it felt to her elbows, for instance.
+And imagine to yourself, too, that it was not an uninhabited island--but
+one upon which an immense gray spider had made a home and raised a
+family.
+
+From time to time the inept caster of flies returned to the camp-fire,
+always in answer to a boisterous summons from his friends. And after
+each visit, his leathery face became redder and his casting more absurd.
+
+Finally his flies caught in a tree, his rod broke, and he abandoned the
+gentle art of angling for that time and place. Meanwhile steam ran from
+the kettle and mingled with the smoke of the fire. The sound of voices
+was incessant. Ten minutes later the gentlemen were served.
+
+Midway of the meal, some of which was burnt black and some of which was
+quite raw, there was produced a thermos bottle as big as the leg of a
+rubber boot. And a moment later, icy-cold champagne was frothing and
+bubbling in tumblers.
+
+In that high air, upon a thick foundation of raw whiskey, the brilliant
+wine of France had soon built a triumphant edifice, so that Eve, cold
+now, miserable, and frightened, felt that the time for an appeal to
+chivalry was long since past.
+
+Far from their wives and constituents, the four politicians were
+obviously not going to stop short of complete drunkenness. Indeed, it
+was an opportunity hardly to be missed. For where else in the woods
+could nature be more exquisite, dignified, and inspiring?
+
+It got so that Eve could no longer bear to watch them or to listen to
+them. Pink with shame, fury, hatred, and fear, she stuffed her fingers
+in her ears and hid her face.
+
+Thus lying, there came to her after quite a long interval, dimly, a
+shout and a howl of laughter with an entirely new intonation. She looked
+up then and saw the thin man, waist-deep in the bushes, just where she
+had left her clothes, making faces of beastly mystery at his companions,
+beckoning to them and urging them to come look. They went to him,
+presently, staggering and evil.
+
+And then they scattered and began to hunt for her.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+"Tired?" queried Mr. Bob Jonstone, with some indignation. "I'm not a bit
+tired. I haven't had enough exercise to keep me quiet. And if it wasn't
+your turn to make the fire, your privilege, and your prerogative, I'd
+insist on chopping the wood myself. No," he said, leaning back
+luxuriously, "I find it very hard to keep still. This walking on the
+level is child's play. What I need to keep me in good shape is mountains
+to climb."
+
+"Like those we have at home," said Colonel Meredith, and if he didn't
+actually wink at Maud, who was arranging some chops on a broiler, he
+made one eye smaller than the other.
+
+"What's wrong with _this_ mountain?" asked Maud.
+
+"Why, we are only half-way up, and the real view is from the top!"
+
+"Of course," said Colonel Meredith, "if you want to see the view, don't
+let us stop you. We'll wait for you. Won't we, Miss Maud?"
+
+She nodded, her eyes shining with mischief.
+
+"But," the colonel continued, "Bob is a bluff. He's had all the climbing
+he can stand. Nothing but a chest full of treasure or a maiden in
+distress would take him a step farther."
+
+"After lunch," said Mr. Jonstone, "I shall."
+
+"Do it now! Lunch won't be ready for an hour. Any kind of a walker could
+make the top of the mountain and be back in that time. But I'll bet you
+anything you like that you can't."
+
+"You will? I'll bet you fifty dollars."
+
+"Done!"
+
+Mr. Jonstone leaped to his feet in a business-like way, waved his hand
+to them, and started briskly off and up along the trail by which they
+had come, and which ended only at the very top of the mountain. It
+wasn't that he wanted any more exercise. He wanted to get away for a
+while to think things over. He had learned on that day's excursion, or
+thought he had, that two is company and that three isn't. The pleasant
+interchangeableness of the trio's relations seemed suddenly to have
+undergone a subtle change. It was as if Maud and Colonel Meredith had
+suddenly found that they liked each other a little better than they
+liked him.
+
+So it wasn't a man in search of exercise or eager to win a bet who was
+hastening toward the top of a mountain, but a child who had just
+discovered that dolls are stuffed with sawdust. He suffered a little
+from jealousy, and a little from anger. He could not have specified what
+they had done to him that morning, and it may have been his imagination
+alone that was to blame, but they had made him feel, or he had made
+himself feel, like a guest who is present, not because he is wanted but
+because for some reason or other he had to be asked.
+
+He walked himself completely out of breath and that did his mind good.
+Resting before making a final spurt to the mountain-top, he heard men's
+voices shouting and hallooing in the forest. The sounds carried him back
+to certain coon and rabbit hunts in his native state, and he wondered
+what these men could be hunting. And having recovered his breath, he
+went on.
+
+He came suddenly in view of a great round pool of water in the midst of
+which was a tiny island, thickly wooded. Just in front of him a fire
+burned low on a beach of white sand.
+
+Upon the beach, his back to Jonstone, stood a tall, thin man who
+appeared to be gazing at the island. Suddenly this man began to shout
+aloud:
+
+"She's on the island! She's on the island!"
+
+From the woods came the sound of crashings, scramblings, and oaths,
+and, one by one, three fat men, very sweaty and crimson in the face,
+came reeling out on the beach, and ranged themselves with the thin man,
+and looked drunkenly toward the island.
+
+"She's hiding on the island, the cute thing," said the thin man.
+
+"Did you see her?"
+
+"I saw the bushes move. That's where she is."
+
+"How deep's the water?"
+
+"I'll tell you in about a minute," said the thin man. He threw his coat
+from him, and, sitting down with a sudden lurch, began to unlace his
+boots.
+
+"Maybe you don't know it," he said, "but I'm some swimmer, I am."
+
+There was a moment of silence and then there came from the island a
+voice that sent a thrill through Mr. Bob Jonstone from head to foot. The
+voice was like frightened music with a sob in it.
+
+"Won't you please go away!"
+
+"Good God," he thought, "they're hunting a woman!"
+
+The drunken men had answered that sobbing appeal with a regular
+view-halloo of drunken laughter.
+
+Mr. Bob Jonstone stepped slowly forward. His thin face had a bluish,
+steely look; and his eyes glinted wickedly like a rattlesnake's. Being
+one against four, he made no declaration of war. He came upon them
+secretly from behind. And first he struck a thin neck just below a
+leathery ear, and then a fat neck.
+
+He was not a strong man physically. But high-strung nerves and cold,
+collected loathing and fury are powerful weapons.
+
+The thin man and the fat man with the whispering voice lay face down on
+the beach and passed from insensibility into stupefied, drunken sleep.
+But with the other two, Mr. Jonstone had a bad time of it, for he had
+broken a bone in his right hand and the pain was excruciating. Often,
+during that battle, he thought of the deadly automatic in his pocket.
+But if he used that, it meant that a woman's name would be printed in
+the newspaper.
+
+The fat men fought hard with drunken fury. Their strength was their
+weight, and they were always coming at him from opposite sides. But an
+empty whiskey bottle caught Mr. Jonstone's swift eye and made a sudden
+end of what its contents had begun. He hit five times and then stood
+alone, among the fallen, a bottle neck of brown glass in his hand.
+
+Then he lifted his voice and spoke aloud, as if to the island:
+
+"They'll not trouble you now. What else can I do?"
+
+"God bless you for doing what you've done! I'm a fool girl, and I
+thought I was all alone and I went in swimming, and they came and I hid
+on the island. And I--I haven't got my things with me!"
+
+"Couldn't you get ashore without being seen? These beasts won't look.
+And I won't look. You can trust me, can't you?"
+
+"When you tell me that nobody is looking I'll come ashore."
+
+"Nobody is looking now."
+
+He heard a splash and sounds as of strong swimming. And he was dying to
+look. He took out his little automatic and cocked it, and he said to
+himself: "If you do look, Bob, you get shot."
+
+Ten minutes passed.
+
+"Are you all right?" he called.
+
+"Yes, thank you, all right now. But how can I thank you? I don't want
+you to see me, if you don't mind. I don't want you to know who I am. But
+I'm the gratefulest girl that ever lived; and I'm going home now, wiser
+than when I came, and, listen----"
+
+"I'm listening."
+
+"I think I'd almost die for you. There!"
+
+Mr. Jonstone's hair fairly bristled with emotion.
+
+"But am I never to see you, never to know your name?"
+
+The answer came from farther off.
+
+"Yes, I think so. Some time."
+
+"Do you promise that?"
+
+Silence--and then:
+
+"I _almost_ promise."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having assured himself that the drunken men were not dead, Mr. Jonstone
+sighed like a furnace and started down the mountain.
+
+His hand hurt him like the devil, but the pain was first cousin to
+delight.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+The Camp was much concerned to hear of poor Mr. Jonstone's accident. A
+round stone, he said, had rolled suddenly under his foot and
+precipitated him down a steep pitch of path. He had put out his hands to
+save his face and, it seemed, broken a bone in one of them. And at that,
+the attempted rescue of his face had not been an overwhelming success.
+
+It was not until the doctor had come and gone that Mr. Jonstone told his
+cousin what had really happened. Colonel Meredith was much excited and
+intrigued by the narrative.
+
+"And you've no idea who she was?" he asked.
+
+"No, Mel; I've thought that the voice was familiar. I've thought that it
+wasn't. It was a very well-bred Northern voice--but agitated probably
+out of its natural intonations. Voices are queer things. A man might not
+recognize his own mother's voice at a time when he was not expecting to
+hear it."
+
+"Voices," said Colonel Meredith, "are beautiful things. This wasn't a
+motherly sort of voice, was it?"
+
+"But it might be," said Mr. Jonstone gently. "I wonder if they've
+anything in this place to make a fellow sleep. Bromide isn't much good
+when you've a sure-enough sharp pain."
+
+"You feel mighty uncomfortable, don't you, Bob?"
+
+The invalid nodded. He was pale as a sheet, and he could not keep still.
+He had received considerable physical punishment and his entire nervous
+system was quivering and jumping.
+
+"I'll see if anybody's got anything," said Colonel Meredith, and he went
+straight to the office, where he found Maud Darling and Eve.
+
+"My cousin is feeling like the deuce," he said. "He won't sleep all
+night if we don't give him something to make him. Do you know of any one
+that's got anything of that sort--morphine, for instance?"
+
+"The best thing will be to take the _Streak_ and get some from the
+doctor," said Maud. "Let's all go."
+
+"I think I won't," said Eve, looking wonderfully cool and serene. "But
+I'll walk down to the float and see you off. What a pity for a man to
+get laid up by an accident that might have been avoided by a little
+attention!"
+
+Colonel Meredith stiffened.
+
+"I am sorry to contradict a lady," he said, "but my cousin has given me
+the particulars of his accident, and it was of a nature that could
+hardly have been avoided by a man. I think, Miss Maud, if you will order
+a launch, I had better tell my cousin where I am going, in case he
+should feel that he was being neglected."
+
+"Don't bother to do that," said Eve. "I'll get word to him."
+
+"Oh, thank you so much, will you?"
+
+"He's lying down, I suppose."
+
+"Yes; he has retired for the night."
+
+"I'll send one of the men," said Eve, "or Sam Langham."
+
+So they went one way and Eve went the other, walking very quickly and
+smiling in the night.
+
+"Mr. Jonstone--oh, Mr. Jonstone! Can you hear me?"
+
+With a sort of shudder of wonder Mr. Jonstone sat up in his bed.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I do hear you--unless I am dreaming."
+
+"You're not dreaming. You are in great pain, owing to an accident which
+could hardly have been avoided by a man, and can't sleep."
+
+"I am in no pain now."
+
+"Colonel Meredith has gone to Carrytown for something to make you
+sleep, so you aren't to fret and feel neglected if he doesn't come back
+to you at once."
+
+"Just the same it's a horrible feeling--to be all alone."
+
+"But if some one--any one were to stay within call----?"
+
+"If _you_ were to stay within call it would make all the difference in
+the world."
+
+"You don't know who I am, do you?"
+
+"I don't know what you look like, and I don't know your name. But I know
+who you are. And once upon a time--long years ago--you promised, you
+half promised, to tell me the other things."
+
+"My name is a very, very old name, and I look like a lot of other
+people. But you say you know who I am. Who am I?"
+
+Mr. Bob Jonstone laughed softly.
+
+"It's enough," said he, "that I know. But are you comfortable out there?
+You're on the porch, aren't you?"
+
+"No; I'm standing on the ground and resting my lazy forehead against the
+porch railing."
+
+"I'd feel easier if you came on the porch and made yourself comfortable
+in a chair, just outside my window. And we could talk easier."
+
+"But you're not supposed to talk."
+
+"Listening would be good for me."
+
+There was a sound of light steps and of a chair being dragged.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't sit just round the corner," said Mr. Jonstone
+presently. "If you sat before the window, sideways, I could see your
+profile against the sky."
+
+"I'm doing very well where I am, thank you."
+
+"But, please, why shouldn't I see you? Why are you so embarrassed at
+me?"
+
+"Wouldn't you be embarrassed if you were a girl and had been through the
+adventure I went through? Wouldn't you be a little embarrassed to see
+the man who helped you, and look him in the face?"
+
+"Don't you ever want me to see you? Because, if you don't, I will go
+away from this place in the morning and never come back."
+
+"Somehow, that doesn't appeal to me very much either."
+
+"I am glad," said Mr. Jonstone quietly.
+
+"How does your hand feel?"
+
+"Which hand?"
+
+"The one you hurt."
+
+"It feels very happy, and the other hand feels very jealous of it."
+
+"Seriously--are you having a pretty bad time?"
+
+"I am having the time of my life--seriously--the time that lucky men
+always have once in their lives."
+
+"Are you very impatient for the morphine?"
+
+"I shall not take it when it comes. It is far better knowing what one
+knows, remembering what one remembers, and looking forward to what a
+presumptuous fool cannot help but look forward to--it is far better to
+keep awake; to lie peacefully in the dark, knowing, remembering, and
+looking forward."
+
+"And just what are you looking forward to?"
+
+"To a long life and a happy one; to the sounds of a voice; to a sudden
+coming to life of the whole 'Oxford Book of Verse'; to seeing a face."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Are you there?"
+
+"Yes; but you mustn't talk."
+
+"I think you are tired. Please don't stay any more if you are tired."
+
+"I'm not tired."
+
+"Then perhaps you are bored."
+
+"I'm not bored."
+
+"Then what are you?"
+
+"You keep quiet."
+
+When, at last, Colonel Meredith came, important with morphine and the
+doctor's instructions, he found his cousin Mr. Bob Jonstone sleeping
+very quietly and peacefully, a much dog-eared copy of the "Oxford Book
+of Verse" clasped to his breast.
+
+Unfortunately the colonel, after putting out the light again, bumped
+into a table, and Mr. Jonstone waked.
+
+"That you, Mel?"
+
+"Yes, Bob; sorry I waked you. Did Miss Darling send word explaining that
+I should be quite a while coming back?"
+
+"Which Miss Darling?"
+
+"Which? Why, Miss Eve."
+
+"Yes, she sent word."
+
+"And how have you been?"
+
+"I took a turn for the better shortly after you left. A little while ago
+I lighted a candle, and read a little and got sleepy. And now I think
+I'll go to sleep again."
+
+"You don't need the morphine?"
+
+"No, Mel. Thank you. Good-night."
+
+"Good-night."
+
+"Mel?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Isn't Eve about the oldest name you know?"
+
+"Oldest, I guess, except Adam and Lilith. You go to sleep."
+
+And Colonel Meredith tiptoed out of the room, murmuring: "Seems to be a
+little shaky in his upper stories."
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+A point of land just across the lake from the camp belonged to the
+Darlings' mother, the Princess Oducalchi. One night the light of fires
+and lanterns appeared on this point and the next morning it was seen to
+be studded here and there with pale-brown tents. The Darlings were
+annoyed to think that any one should trespass on so large a scale on
+some one else's land. In a code of laws shot to pieces with class
+legislation, trespassers are, of course, exempt from punishment; their
+presence and depredations in one's private melon-patch are none the less
+disagreeable, and Arthur Darling, as his mother's representative, was
+peculiarly enraged.
+
+Arthur, in his idle moments, when, for instance, he was not studying the
+webs of spiders or classifying the cries of frogs, sometimes let his
+mind run on politics and the whole state of the Union. In such matters,
+of course, he was only a tyro. Why should the puny and prejudiced
+population of Texas have two votes in the Senate when the hordes of New
+York have but two? Why, in a popular form of government, should the
+minority do the ruling? Why should not a hard-working rich man have an
+equal place in the sun with a man who, through laziness and a moral
+nature twisted like a pretzel, remains poor? Why should education be
+forced on children in a country where education, which means good
+manners and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, amounts
+practically to disfranchisement?
+
+Arthur, in his political ruminations, could never get beyond such
+questions as these. If A has paid for and owns a piece of land, why is
+it not A's to enjoy, rather than B's, whose sole claim thereto is
+greater strength of body than A, and the desire to possess those things
+which are not his?
+
+At least, Arthur could row across to the point and protest in his
+mother's name. If the trespassers were gentlefolk who imagined
+themselves to have camped upon public land, they would, of course, offer
+to go and to pay all damages--in which event, Arthur would invite them
+to stay as long as they pleased, only begging that they would not set
+the woods on fire. If, however, the trespassers belonged to one of the
+privileged classes for whose benefit the laws are made and continued, he
+would simply be abused roundly and perhaps vilely. He would then take a
+thrashing at the hands of superior numbers, and the incident would be
+closed.
+
+Colonel Meredith, seeing Arthur about to embark on his mission, offered
+help and comfort in the emergency.
+
+"Just you wait till I fetch my rifle," he said; "and if there's any
+trifling, we'll shoot them up."
+
+"Shoot them up!" exclaimed Arthur. "If we shot them up, we'd go from
+here to prison and from prison to the electric chair."
+
+"In South Carolina," Colonel Meredith protested, "if a man comes on our
+land and we tell him to get off and he won't, we drill a hole in him."
+
+"And that's one of the best things about the South," said Arthur. "But
+we do things differently in the North. If a man comes on my land and I
+tell him to get off and he says he won't, then I have the right to put
+him off, using as much force as is necessary. And if he is twice as big
+as I am and there are three or four of him, you can see, without using
+glasses, how the matter must end."
+
+"Then all you are out for is to take a licking?"
+
+"That is my only privilege under the law. But I hope I shall not have to
+avail myself of it. Where there are so many tents there must be money.
+Where there is money there are possessions, and where there are
+possessions, there are the same feelings about property that you and I
+have."
+
+"Still," said Colonel Meredith, "I wish you'd take me along and our
+guns. There is always the chance of managing matters so that fatalities
+may be construed into acts of self-defense."
+
+"Get behind me, you man of blood!" exclaimed Arthur, laughing, and he
+leaped into a canoe, and with a part of the same impulse sent it flying
+far out from the float. Then, standing, he started for the brown tents
+with easy, powerful strokes, very earnest for the speedy accomplishment
+of a disagreeable duty. That anything really pleasant might come of his
+expedition never entered his head.
+
+"Arthur gone to put them off?"
+
+"Why, yes! Good-morning, Miss Gay."
+
+"Good-morning, yourself, Colonel Meredith, and many of them. Want to
+look?"
+
+"Thank you."
+
+Colonel Meredith focussed the glasses upon the brown tents.
+
+"What do you make them out to be?"
+
+"I can make out a sort of nigger carrying tea into one of the tents. And
+there's a young lady in black. She seems to be walking down to the
+shore to meet your brother. And now she's waving her hand to him."
+
+"The impudent thing," exclaimed Gay. "What's my brother doing?"
+
+"He's paddling as if he expected to cross a hundred yards of water in a
+second. If the young lady comes any closer to the water, she'll get
+wet."
+
+Suddenly blushing crimson, he thrust the field-glasses back into Gay's
+hands, and cried with complete conviction that he was "blessed."
+
+In the bright field of magnification, hastily focussed to her own
+vision, Gay beheld her brother and the young woman in black tightly
+locked in each other's arms.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+To Arthur, half-way across the lake, considering just what he should say
+to the trespassers, the sudden sight of the person whom of all persons
+in the world he least expected and most wanted to see was a staggering
+physical shock. He almost fell out of his canoe. And if he had done that
+he might very likely have drowned, so paralyzing in effect were those
+first moments of unbelievable joy and astonishment. Then she waved her
+hand to him and swiftly crossed the beach, and he began to paddle like a
+madman. When the canoe beached with sudden finality, Arthur simply made
+a flying leap to the shore and caught her in his arms.
+
+Then he held her at arm's length, and if eyes could eat, these would
+have been the last moments upon earth of a very lovely young woman.
+
+Then a sort of horror of what he had done and of what he was doing
+seized him. His hands dropped to his sides and the pupils of his eyes
+became pointed with pain. But she said:
+
+"It's all right, Arthur; don't look like that. My husband is dead."
+
+"Dead?" said Arthur, his face once more joyous as an angel's. "Thank God
+for that!"
+
+And why not thank God when some worthless, cruel man dies? And why not
+write the truth about him upon his tombstone instead of the conventional
+lies?
+
+"But why didn't you write to me?" demanded Arthur.
+
+"It had been such a long time since we saw each other. How did I know
+that you still cared?"
+
+"But how could I stop caring--about you?"
+
+"Couldn't you?"
+
+"Why, I didn't even try," said Arthur. "I just gave it up as a bad job.
+But how, in the name of all that's good and blessed, do you happen to be
+in this particular place at this particular time? Did you, by any
+chance, come by way of the heavens in a 'sweet chariot'? I came to eject
+trespassers, and I find you!"
+
+"And I came to spy on you, Arthur, and to find out if you still cared.
+And if you didn't, I was going to tie a stone round my neck and lie down
+in the lake. Of course, if I'm a trespasser----"
+
+They had moved slowly away from the shore toward the tents. From one of
+these a languid, humorous voice that made Arthur start hailed them. And
+through the fly of the tent was thrust a beautiful white hand and the
+half of a beautiful white arm.
+
+"I can't come out, Arthur," said the voice; "but good-morning to you,
+and how's the family?"
+
+"Of all people in the world," exclaimed Arthur; "my own beautiful
+mamma!" And he sprang to the extended hand and clasped it and kissed it.
+
+"Your excellent stepfather," said the voice, "is out walking up an
+appetite for breakfast. I hope you will be very polite to him. If it
+hadn't been for him, Cecily would have stayed in London, where we found
+her. He wormed her secret out of her and brought her to you as a
+peace-offering."
+
+There was a deep emotion in Arthur's voice as he said:
+
+"Then there shall always be peace between us."
+
+The hand had been withdrawn from the light of day; but the languid,
+humorous voice continued to make sallies from the brown tent.
+
+"We didn't want to be in the way; so, remembering this bit of property,
+we just chucked our Somali outfit into a ship, and here we are! I was
+dreadfully shocked and grieved to hear that you were all quite broke and
+had started an inn. In New York it is reported to be a great success, is
+it?"
+
+"Why, I hope so," said Arthur; "I don't really know. Mary's head man.
+Maud keeps the books; the triplets keep getting into mischief, and Eve,
+so far as I know, keeps out. As for me, I had an occupation, but it's
+gone now."
+
+"What was your job, Arthur?"
+
+"My job was to have my arm in imagination where it now is in reality."
+
+"Cecily!" exclaimed the voice. "Is that boy hugging you publicly? Am I
+absolutely without influence upon manners even among my own tents?"
+
+"Absolutely, Princess!" laughed Cecily.
+
+"Then the quicker I come out of my tent the better! You'll stop to
+breakfast, Arthur?"
+
+"With pleasure, but shan't I get word to the girls? Of course, they
+would feel it their duty to call upon you at once."
+
+"I should hope so--as an older woman I should expect that much of them.
+But, princess or no princess, I refuse to stand on ceremony. In my most
+exalted and aristocratic moments I can never forget that I am their
+mother. So after breakfast _I_ shall call on _them_."
+
+At this moment, very tall and thin, in gray Scotch tweeds, carrying a
+very high, foreheady head, there emerged from the forest Prince
+Oducalchi, leading by the hand his eight-year-old son, Andrea, and
+singing in a touching, clear baritone something in Italian to the effect
+that a certain "Mariana's roses were red and white, in the market-place
+by the clock-tower!"
+
+Andrea wore a bright-red sweater, carried a fine twenty-bore gun made by
+a famous London smith, and looked every inch a prince. He had all the
+Darling beauty in his face and all the Oducalchi pride of place and
+fame.
+
+"Mr. Darling, I believe?" asked the prince, his left eyebrow slightly
+acockbill. "I have not had the pleasure of seeing you for some years,
+but I perceive that you are by way of accepting my peace-offering."
+
+"I was never just to you," said Arthur, a little pale and looking very
+proud and handsome, "and you have been very good to my mamma and you
+have been very good to me. Will you forgive me?"
+
+"I cannot do that. There has been nothing to forgive. But I will shake
+hands with you with all the pleasure in the world--my dear Cecily, does
+he come up to the memories of him? Poor children, you have had a sad
+time of it in this merry world! I may call you 'Arthur'? Arthur, this is
+your half-brother, Andrea. I hope that you will take a little time to
+show him the beautiful ways of your North Woods."
+
+Arthur shook hands solemnly with the small boy, and their stanchly met
+eyes told of an immediate mutual confidence and liking.
+
+"I've always wanted a brother in the worst way," said Arthur.
+
+"So have I," piped Andrea.
+
+And then Princess Oducalchi came out of her tent, and proved that,
+although her daughters resembled her in features, simplicity, and grace
+and dignity of carriage, they would never really vie with her in beauty
+until they had loved much, suffered much, borne children into the world,
+and remembered all that was good in things and forgotten all that was
+evil.
+
+"Mamma," said Arthur, "is worth travelling ten thousand miles to see any
+day, isn't she?"
+
+"On foot," said Prince Oducalchi, "through forests and morasses infested
+with robbers and wild beasts."
+
+The princess blushed and became very shy and a little confused for a few
+moments. Then, with a happy laugh, she thrust one hand through her
+husband's arm, the other through Arthur's, and urged them in the
+direction of the tent, where breakfast was to be served.
+
+Andrea followed, with Cecily holding him tightly by the hand.
+
+"If we had not been buried in Somaliland at the time," said Arthur's
+mother, "we would never have let this 'Inn' happen. I'm sure you were
+against it, Arthur?"
+
+"Of course," said he simply. "But with sister Mary's mind made up, and
+the rest backing her, what could a poor broken-hearted young man do? And
+it has worked out better than I ever hoped. I don't mean in financial
+ways. I, mean, the sides of it that I thought would be humiliating and
+objectionable haven't been. Indeed, it's all been rather a lark, and
+Mary insists upon telling me that we are a lot better off than we were.
+We charge people the most outrageous prices! It's enough to make a dead
+man blush in the dark. And the only complaint we ever had about it was
+that the prices weren't high enough. So Mary raised them."
+
+"But," objected Prince Oducalchi, "you, and especially your sisters,
+cannot go on being innkeepers forever. You, I understand, for
+instance"--and his fine eyes twinkled with mirth and kindness--"are
+thinking of getting married."
+
+"I am," said Arthur, with so much conviction that even his Cecily
+laughed at him.
+
+"When I divorced your poor father," said the princess, "he happened to
+be enjoying one of his terrifically rich moments. So, in lieu of
+alimony, he turned over a really huge sum of money to me. When I married
+Oducalchi and told him about the money, he made me put it in trust for
+you children, to be turned over to you after your father's death. So you
+see there was never any real need to start the Inn--but of course we
+were in Africa and so forth and so on-- If you've finished your coffee,
+I'm dying to see the girls. And I'm dying to tell them about the money,
+and to send all the horrid guests packing!"
+
+"Some of the horrid guests," said Arthur, "won't pack. Of course, the
+girls think that I only study frogs and plants; but it's a libel. When
+two and two are thrust into my hands, I put them together, just as
+really sensible people do. You will find, mamma, a sad state of affairs
+at the camp."
+
+Princess Oducalchi began to bristle with interest and alarm.
+
+"Andrea," said his father, "have a canoe put overboard for me."
+
+Andrea rose at once and left the breakfast tent.
+
+"Now, Arthur," cried the princess, "tell me everything at once!"
+
+"Gay," said Arthur, "is in love with a young Englishman, and knows that
+she is. He had to go home to be made an earl; but I think she is
+expecting him back in a few days, because she is beginning to take an
+interest in the things she really likes. Mary is in love with Sam
+Langham, and he with her. They, however, don't know this. Phyllis has
+forsaken her garden and become a dead-game sport. This she has done for
+the sake of a red-headed Bostonian named Herring. Lee and a young fellow
+named Renier are neglecting other people for each other. And our sedate
+Maud, formerly very much in the company of two fiery Southerners, is now
+very much in the company of one of them, Colonel Meredith, of South
+Carolina. The other Carolinian, Mr. Bob Jonstone, sprained his wrist the
+other day, and it seems that sister Eve was intended by an all-wise
+Providence to be a trained nurse. But in the case of those last
+mentioned there are certain mysteries to be solved."
+
+At this moment Andrea appeared at the tent opening and announced in his
+piping child voice: "The canoe is overboard, papa."
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+Andrea stuck to his big brother like a leech, and insisted upon crossing
+to The Camp in the same canoe with him and Cecily. To Andrea the
+possibility of newly engaged persons wishing to be by themselves was
+negligible. Princess Oducalchi, an old hand on inland waters, took
+charge of the other canoe, and, like Arthur, in spite of a look of
+resigned horror on her husband's face, paddled standing up.
+
+Arthur, too happy to make speed, was rapidly distanced by his mother,
+whose long, graceful figure and charming little, round head he regarded
+from time to time with great admiration.
+
+"She might be one of my sisters!" he exclaimed to Cecily.
+
+"If she only was," said Cecily, "and the others were only exactly like
+her, then I shouldn't be a bit frightened."
+
+"Frightened?"
+
+"Wouldn't you be frightened if I had six great angry brothers and you
+were just going to meet them for the first time?"
+
+Arthur smiled steadily and shook his head.
+
+"I'm too happy to be afraid of anything."
+
+"I'm not. The happier I feel the more frightened I feel. And I can feel
+your sisters picking me all to pieces, and saying what a horrid little
+thing I am!"
+
+"Little? Haven't I told you that you are exactly the right size?"
+
+"No, you haven't."
+
+"Then I tell you now. I leave it to Andrea. Isn't she exactly the right
+size, Andrea?"
+
+"Then mamma is too tall."
+
+"No, mamma is exactly the right size for a mamma. In fact, Andrea,"
+exulted Arthur, "on this particular morning of this particular year of
+grace everything in the world is exactly the right size, except me. I'm
+not half big enough to contain my feelings. So here goes!"
+
+And the sedate Arthur put back his head, which resembled that of the
+young Galahad, and opened his mouth, and let forth the most
+blood-curdling war-whoop that has been sounded during the Christian era.
+
+Cecily clapped her hands to her ears, and Andrea gazed upon his big
+brother with redoubled admiration.
+
+"Is that like Indians do?" he asked.
+
+"Not at all," said Arthur; "that's what studious and domesticated young
+men do when they've overslept, and wake up to find the sky blue and the
+forest green." And once more he whooped terrifically. And Wow, the dog,
+heard him, and thought he had gone mad; and Uncas, the chipmunk, ran to
+the top of a tall tree at full speed, down it even faster, and into a
+deep and safe hole among the roots.
+
+Gay alone was at the float to receive the Oducalchis; but now word of
+their coming had gone about The Camp, and the remaining Darlings could
+be seen hurrying up from various directions.
+
+From embracing her mother, Gay turned with characteristic swiftness and
+sweetness to Cecily, who had just stepped from Arthur's canoe to the
+float, flung her arms around her, and kissed her.
+
+"I'm not quite sure of your name," she said; "but I love you very much,
+and you're prettier than all outdoors."
+
+Then Maud came, followed by Eve and Mary, with Lee next and Phyllis
+last, and they all talked at once, and made much of their mother and
+Cecily and little Andrea. And they all teased Arthur at once, and
+showered Oducalchi with polite and hospitable speeches. And he was
+greatly moved, because he knew very well that these beautiful maidens
+had loved their own brilliant scapegrace father to distraction, and that
+it was hard for them to look with kindness upon his successor.
+
+Never, I think, did a mere float, an affair of planks supported by the
+displacing power of empty casks, have gathered upon it at one time so
+much beauty, so many delighted and delightful faces.
+
+And now came guides, servants, and camp helpers, to whom Princess
+Oducalchi had been a kind and understanding mistress in the old days,
+and then, shyly and hanging back, hoping they were wanted and not sure,
+Sam Langham, Renier, Herring, the Carolinians, and others, until the
+float began to sink and there was a laughter panic and a general rush up
+the gangway to the shore. Here Wow, the dog, did a great deal of swift
+wagging and loud barking, and Uncas, the chipmunk, from the top of a
+tree said: "I'm not really angry, but I'm scolding because I'm afraid to
+come down, and nobody loves me or makes much of me--ever!"
+
+To Arthur, standing a little aside, beaming with pride and happiness,
+and recording in his heart every pleasant thing which his sisters said
+to Cecily and every pleasant look they gave her, came Gay presently, and
+slipped an arm through his.
+
+"I'm so glad," she said.
+
+But there was something in her voice that was not glad, and with one
+swift glance he read her wistful heart. He pressed her arm, and said:
+
+"I know one poor little kid that's left out in the cold for the moment;
+one little lion that feels as if it wasn't going to get any martyr; one
+little sister that a big brother loves and understands a little bit
+better than any of the others-- So there! At the moment every _chacune_
+has her _chacun_, except one. Moments are fleeting, my dear, and other
+moments are ahead. I, too, have lived bad, empty, unhappy moments."
+
+"But you always knew that she cared."
+
+"And don't you know about him?"
+
+"I only know that I've seen so many people appear to be idiotically
+happy at the same time, and it makes me want to cry."
+
+"And for that very reason," said Arthur, "the moments that are ahead
+will be the happier."
+
+"I wonder," said Gay, and, "I know," said Arthur.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+The fact of Arthur's sudden blossoming into a full-fledged and emphatic
+figure of romance had an unsettling effect upon many of the peacefully
+disposed minds in The Camp. It is always so when friends, especially in
+youth, come to partings of ways. Clement, who takes the Low road, cannot
+but be disturbed at the thought of those possible adventures which lie
+in wait for Covington, who has fared forth by the High. There was the
+feeling among many of the young people in the camp that, if they didn't
+hurry, they might be left behind. Nobody expressed this feeling or
+acknowledged it or recognized in it anything more than a feeling of
+unrest; but it existed, nevertheless, and had its effect upon actions
+and affections.
+
+Renier had been leading a life of almost perfect happiness. For the
+things that made him happy were the same sort of things that make boys
+happy. No school; no parental obstructions or admonitions;
+green-and-blue days filled from end to end with fishing, sailing,
+making fires, shooting at marks, and perfecting himself in physical
+attainments. Add to these things the digestion and the faculties of a
+healthy boy interested neither in drink, tobacco, nor in any book which
+failed to contain exciting and chivalrous adventures, and, above all, a
+companion whose tastes and sympathies were such that she might just as
+well have been a boy as not.
+
+They were chums rather than sweethearts. It needed a sense of old times
+coming to an end and new times beginning to make them realize the full
+depth and significance of their attachment for each other.
+
+There were four of us once "in a kingdom by the sea," and I shall not
+forget the awful sense of partings and finality, and calamity, for that
+matter, furnished by a sudden sight of the first flaming maple of
+autumn.
+
+"I think your mother's a perfect brick," said Renier. "She makes you
+feel as if she'd known you all your life, and was kind of grateful to
+you for living."
+
+"I'm rather crazy about the prince," said Lee. "Of course, I oughtn't to
+be. But I can't help it, and after all he's been awfully good to mamma.
+Do you believe in divorce?"
+
+"I never did until I saw your mother. She wouldn't ask for anything that
+she didn't really deserve."
+
+"But it's funny, isn't it," said Lee, "that so many people get on
+famously together until they are actually married, and then they begin
+to fight like cats? I knew a girl who was engaged to a man for five
+years. You'd think they'd get to know each other pretty well in that
+time, wouldn't you? But they didn't. They hadn't been married six months
+before they hated each other."
+
+"And that proves," said Renier, "that long engagements are a mistake."
+
+"Smarty!" exclaimed Lee.
+
+"I suppose your brother'll be getting married right away, won't he?
+Haven't they liked each other for ever so long?"
+
+"M'm!" Lee nodded. "But Arthur never does anything right away. He does
+too much mooning and wool-gathering. If a united family can get him to
+the altar in less than a year they'll have accomplished wonders. There's
+one thing, though--when we do get him married good and proper, he'll
+stay married. He's like that at all games. It comes natural to him to
+keep his eyes in the boat. He's got the finest and sweetest nature of
+any man in this world, _I_ think."
+
+"Of course, you except present company?"
+
+"Heavens, yes!" cried Lee, and they both laughed.
+
+Then, suddenly, Lee looked him in the eyes quite solemnly.
+
+"I wasn't fooling," she said, "not entirely. I _do_ think you're fine
+and sweet. I didn't always, but I do now."
+
+There was levity in Renier's words but not in his voice.
+
+"This," he said, "so far has been a perfectly good Tuesday."
+
+"Whatever we do together," said Lee, "you always give me the best of it.
+It's been a good summer."
+
+"Do you feel as if summer was over, too?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"That's funny, isn't it? Because it's nowhere near over, is it? Maybe
+it's the excitement of the Oducalchis' arrival and your brother's
+engagement. It makes you sort of feel as if there wasn't time to settle
+back into the regular life and get things going again before the leaves
+fall."
+
+He spoke. And from the fine striped maple under which they sat there
+fell, and fluttered slowly into Lee's lap, a great yellowing leaf ribbed
+with incipient scarlet.
+
+"That only means," said Renier--but there was a kind of awe in his
+voice--"that this particular tree has indigestion."
+
+And they sat for a time in silence and looked at the leaf. And lo!
+Arthur came upon them, smiling.
+
+"I was looking for you two," he said. "I thought maybe you'd do me a
+great favor. I've got to play host, and----"
+
+"Nobody would miss us!" exclaimed Lee.
+
+"They wouldn't?" said Arthur. "I'll bet you anything you like that,
+during your absence, you will both be mentioned among the missing, by
+name, at least five times."
+
+"What'll you bet?" asked Lee eagerly. "Nobody ever thinks of _us_.
+Nobody ever mentions _us_. Nobody even loves _us_. What'll you bet?"
+
+"Anything you like," said Arthur, "and if necessary I will take charge
+of the five personal mentionings and make them myself!"
+
+Lee shook her head sadly, and said: "Once an accepted lover, always a
+sure thing, man. Oh, Arthur, how low you have fallen! You used to
+engineer bets with me for the sheer joy of seeing me win them. But now
+you are on the make, and it looks as if there was no justice under
+heaven-- Where do you want us to go and what do you want us to do when
+we get there? Of course, we'll go; we always do. Everybody sends us on
+errands, and we always go. The longer the errands the oftener we go. But
+nobody seems to realize that we might enjoy spending one single solitary
+afternoon sitting under a striped maple and watching the green leaves
+turn yellow. Nobody even loves us! But when we are dead there will be
+the most frightful remorse and sorrow."
+
+Arthur leaned heavily against the stem of the striped maple.
+
+"Your sad case," he said, "certainly cries aloud for justice and
+redress----"
+
+"'Kid us along, Bo,'" said Lee; "we love it!"
+
+"I want two people," said Arthur, "for whom I have affection and in whom
+I have confidence, to go at once to Carrytown in the _Streak_ and
+consult a lawyer upon a matter of paramount importance and delicacy--"
+He hesitated, and Lee said:
+
+"I pray you, without further ado, continue your piquant narrative."
+
+Then Arthur, in a tone of solemn, confidential eagerness:
+
+"Look here, you two, go to Carrytown, will you, and find out how quickly
+two people can get married in the State of New York, and what they have
+to do about licenses and things? Will you? I'll be eternally obliged."
+
+"Of course, we will," exclaimed Lee in sudden excitement. "Are you
+game?"
+
+"You bet your sweet life I'm game!" cried the vulgar Renier. And a few
+minutes later the two inseparable school-boyesque chums, whom nobody
+mentioned, whom everybody sent on errands, and whom nobody even loved,
+were streaking across the lake in the _Streak_.
+
+There was but the one lawyer in Carrytown and the one stenographer.
+Their shingles hang one above the other on the face of the one brick
+building.
+
+At the door of this building Lee suddenly drew back.
+
+"Look here!" she said. "Won't it look rather funny if we march in hand
+in hand and say: 'Beg pardon, sir, but how do you get married in the
+State of New York?'"
+
+"It _would_ look funny," said Renier, "and I shouldn't wonder if it made
+us feel funny. But the joke would really be on the lawyer. We could say
+'_Honi soit qui mal y pense_' to him. Of course, if it would really
+embarrass you----"
+
+"It wouldn't," said Lee, "_really_."
+
+So they went up a narrow flight of stairs and knocked on the door of
+room Number Five. There was no answer. So they pushed open the door and
+entered a square room bound in sheepskin with red-and-black labels.
+There was nobody in the room, and Lee exclaimed:
+
+"Nobody even loves us."
+
+"He'll be in the back room," said Renier. "I know. Once I swiped a
+muskmelon from a lawyer's melon-patch, and had to see him about it. _He_
+was in the back room----"
+
+"'Counting out his money'?"
+
+"No; he was drinking whiskey with a judge and a livery-stable keeper,
+and they were all spitting on a red-hot stove."
+
+"What did he do about the melon?"
+
+"He told me to can the melon and have a drink. I had already canned the
+melon as well as I could (I wasn't educated along scientific lines) and
+my grandmother had promised me any watch I wanted if I didn't drink till
+I was twenty-one."
+
+"Did you?"
+
+"I did not."
+
+"Did you get the watch?"
+
+"I did not."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Grandma reneged. She said she didn't remember making any such promise."
+
+They pushed open a swinging door and entered the back room.
+
+Here, in a revolving chair, sat a stout young man with a red face. Upon
+his knees sat a stout young woman with a red face. And with something of
+the consistency with which a stamp adheres to an envelope so the one red
+face appeared glued to the other red face.
+
+The red face of the stout young man had one free eye which detected the
+presence of intruders. And the stout young man said:
+
+"Caught with the goods! Jump up, Minnie, and behave yourself!"
+
+Minnie's upspring was almost a record-breaker.
+
+Renier began to stammer:
+
+"I b-b-beg your pardon," he said, "but I thought you might b-b-be able
+to tell me how to g-g-get married in New York State."
+
+The stout young man rose from his revolving chair; he was embarrassed
+almost to the point of paralysis, but his mind and mouth continued to
+work.
+
+"You've come to just the right man," he said, "at just the right time,
+for information of that sort. First, you hire a stenographer; then you
+get a mash on her. Then she sits in your lap--she _will_ do it--and then
+you kiss her. And then you get a license, and then you curse laws and
+red tape for a while, and then you wed. Now, what you want is a
+license?"
+
+"Exactly," said Renier. "It--it's for another fellow."
+
+"Friend of yours?" queried the stout young man.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you want a license for him, not for yourself?"
+
+Renier nodded.
+
+"At this moment," said the stout young man, "there are assembled on the
+long wharf, chewin' tobacco and cursin', some twenty-five or thirty
+marines. Would you mind just stepping down and telling that to them?"
+
+"I am quite serious," said Renier. "It is my friend who wants to get
+married."
+
+"And _you_ don't?"
+
+Renier stammered ineffectually.
+
+"Then," said the stout young man, with a glance at Lee (of the highest
+admiration), "you're a gol-darn fool."
+
+And forthwith he was so vulgar as to burst into a sudden snatch of
+song:
+
+  "Old man Rule was a gol-darn fool,
+  For he couldn't see the water in the gol-darn pool!"
+
+At the finish of this improvisation the dreadfully confused Minnie went,
+"Tee-hee!"
+
+And, horror of horrors, that charming boylike companion, Lee Darling,
+behind whom were well-bred generations, also went suddenly, "Tee-hee."
+
+"Licenses," said the stout young man, "are applied for in room Five.
+After you, sir; after you, miss."
+
+And, with a waggish expression, he turned to Minnie.
+
+"Be back in five minutes," he said; "try not to forget me, my flighty
+one."
+
+When they were in the front room, he said:
+
+"Before a license is issued, the licensor must be satisfied as to the
+preliminaries. Now, then, what can you tell me as to lap sitting and
+kissings?"
+
+"You," cried Lee, in a sudden blaze of indignation, "are the freshest,
+most objectionable American I ever set eyes on."
+
+The stout young man turned appealingly to Renier.
+
+"You wouldn't say that," he said; "you'd say I was just typical,
+wouldn't you, now? And I wish you would tell her that, though in these
+backwoods I have been obliged to eschew my Chesterfield, I've got a
+great big heart in me and mean well."
+
+During the last words of this speech he became appealingly wistful.
+
+"Why," said he to Lee, "just because Minnie and me is stout, don't you
+think we know heaven when we see it--the empyrean! Yesterday she threw
+me down, and I says to her: 'Since all my life seems meant for
+"fails"--since this was written and needs must be--my whole soul rises
+up to bless your name in pride and thankfulness. Who knows but the world
+may end to-night?' To-day she sits in my lap and we see which can hug
+the hardest. Ever try that?"
+
+And suddenly the creature's voice melted and shook. He was a genuine
+orator, as we Americans understand it, having that within his powers of
+voice that defies logic and melts the heart.
+
+"Wouldn't you," he said, "even _like_ to sit in his lap? Wouldn't you
+_love_ to sit in his lap and be hugged?"
+
+Lee looked to Renier for help, as he to her. And they took a step apiece
+directly toward each other, and another step. It was as if they had been
+hypnotized. Suddenly Renier caught Lee's hand in his, and after a
+moment of looking into his eyes she turned to the stout man, and sang in
+miraculous imitation of him:
+
+  "Young Miss Mule is a gol-darn fool,
+  But you made her see the water in the gol-darn pool."
+
+"I'll just get a license blank," said the stout young man. "They're in
+the back room."
+
+"Thank you," said Renier--"if you will, Mr.----"
+
+"Heartbeat!" flashed the stout young man, and left them. And he wasn't
+lying or making fun that time. For that was his really truly name. And
+in northern New York people are beginning to think that he is by way of
+being up to it.
+
+Suddenly Lee quoted from a joke that she and Renier had in common. She
+said, as if surprised:
+
+"'Why, there's a table over there!'"
+
+And Renier, his voice suddenly breaking and melting, answered:
+
+"'Why, so there is--and here's a chair!'"
+
+And Mr. Heartbeat, making a supreme effort to live up to his name, did
+not return with the license blank for nearly eight minutes. During
+those minutes, Renier resolved that in every room in his home there
+should be at least one revolving chair. And they came out of Mr.
+Heartbeat's office no longer boyish companions but lovers, a little
+startled, engaged, and licensed to be married.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+"Lee, dear," said Renier, "you don't feel that that fellow buncoed you
+into this, do you? Please say you don't."
+
+"Of course, I wasn't buncoed," she said, and with infinite confidence.
+"Why, I've seen the thing coming for months! Haven't you?"
+
+"I've seen a certain girl begin by being very dear and grow dearer and
+dearer--I wish we could _walk_ back. I'm afraid of motor-boats, fresh
+water, and sudden storms on mountain lakes. And I hereby highly resolve
+that after this perilous trip I shall never again do anything dangerous,
+such as watching people going up in aeroplanes, such as sitting around
+with wet feet, such as eating green fruit, such as-- Oh, my own darling
+little kiddie," he whispered with sudden trembling emotion, "but this
+life is precious."
+
+"George and Charley are looking at us," said Lee, "with funny looks. I
+wonder if they are _on_? I wonder if everybody will be _on_--just by
+looking at us. _Do_ I look foolish?"
+
+"You do not, but I think you are foolish to take a feller like me, and
+that's why I'm going to dance down this gang-plank and snap my fingers
+and shock George and Charley out of their senses."
+
+During this first part of the _Streak_'s swift rush from Carrytown to
+The Camp a tranquil silence came over them. Lee, I think, was searching
+her heart with questions. But she had no doubt of her love for Renier;
+she doubted only her capacity to be to him exactly the wife he needed.
+And I know that Renier just sat, brazening the critical glances of
+George and Charley, and adored her with his eyes.
+
+And what were his thoughts? Would you give a penny for them? He leaned
+closer to her, and in a whisper that thrilled them both to the bone, he
+quoted from Poe:
+
+  "And neither the angels in heaven above,
+    Nor the demons down under the sea,
+  Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
+    Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."
+
+And a little later he said:
+
+"I never knew till to-day what poetry is for. I thought people who wrote
+it were just a little simple and that people who read and quoted it were
+perfect jackasses."
+
+"And what is poetry for?" asked Lee, smiling.
+
+"Poetry," he said, "is for _you_."
+
+As they neared the camp the sentiment in their hearts yielded a little
+to excitement.
+
+"When we tell 'em," said Lee, "it's going to be just like a bomb going
+off. And everybody will be terribly envious."
+
+"Nobody even loves us," laughed Renier, and he quoted:
+
+  "Among ten million, one was she,
+  And surely all men hated me."
+
+And like a flash Lee answered:
+
+  "Among ten million he was one,
+  So all the ladies fought like fun."
+
+"One thing is sure," sand Renier, "we've more than executed Brother
+Arthur's delicate and confidential commission. What we don't know about
+getting married in the State of New York simply doesn't exist."
+
+Arthur, eager and impatient, was like a more famous person, watching and
+waiting.
+
+"Well," he said, "thank you a thousand times. And what did you find
+out?"
+
+"We've brought you a license blank," said Lee; "you simply fill it out
+with your names and ages and things--like this--" And she placed a
+second paper in her brother's hands.
+
+And conspicuous on the paper he saw Lee's name and Renier's. His hands
+shook a little, and his face became very grave and tender.
+
+"Say you're surprised!" exclaimed Lee; "say you were never so surprised
+in all your born days!"
+
+"But I'm not surprised," said Arthur. "Come here to me!" He opened his
+arms to her and she flung herself into them. Over her shoulder and
+hiding head Arthur spoke to Renier.
+
+"No man," he said, "knows his own heart, and no woman knows hers. Nobody
+can promise with honesty to love forever. For sometimes love dies just
+as simply and inexplicably as it is born. But a man can promise to be
+good to his wife always, and tender with her and faithful to her, and if
+he is a gentleman he will make those promises good."
+
+"I make those promises," said Renier simply; "will you give her to me?"
+
+"It is for no man to give or to withhold," said Arthur. "The gods give.
+The duty of brothers is just to try to help things along and to love
+their sisters and to be friends with their brothers-in-law."
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+"And now," said Lee, "I think I'll tell mamma."
+
+On the way to find the princess, Lee and Renier encountered Herring. He
+appeared to be hurrying, but something in their faces brought him to a
+sudden stop.
+
+Their attempts to meet his inquiring gaze with indifference proved
+unavailing, for he closed one eye and said:
+
+"Which of you two has swallowed the family canary? Or has each of you
+swallowed half of him?"
+
+The guilty pair were unable to preserve their natural coloring. They
+turned crimson, and each showed a courteous willingness to let the other
+be the first to speak.
+
+"You've been to Carrytown," said Herring. "I saw you start. You raced
+down to the float. And in your rivalry to see which should board the
+_Streak_ first, it looked as if you were going to knock each other
+overboard. Renier, he won, and you, Miss Lee, were annoyed. When you
+returned from Carrytown, you had long, pensive, anxious faces. Renier
+stepped ashore and, in helping you ashore, gave you both hands. When a
+girl whom I have seen climb a tree after a baby owl accepts the aid of a
+man's two hands in stepping from a solid boat to a solid float, there is
+food for thought. Having landed, you proceeded direct to the head of the
+Darling family and were for some time engaged with him in solemn
+discourse. A paper was shown him. From a distance it looked as if it
+might be some sort of a license--a license to hunt and be hunted,
+perhaps----"
+
+"But it wasn't," said Lee suddenly, and she thrust her hand under
+Renier's arm. "If you must know, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, it was a license
+to love and be loved. So there!"
+
+She was no longer blinking, nor was Renier. They looked so loving and
+proud that it was Herring's turn to feel embarrassment. Then he said:
+
+"I only meant to be a tease. If I'd really thought anything--I wouldn't,
+of course; none of my darn business. But I'm _awfully_ glad. I've hoped
+all along it would happen. It's the best ever. Am I to be secret as the
+grave or can I tell--any one I happen to meet?"
+
+"Give us ten minutes to tell mamma," said Lee, "and then consider your
+lips unsealed."
+
+Herring had drawn from his pocket a stop-watch and set it going.
+
+"Ten minutes," he said. "Thanks awfully! And good luck!"
+
+He had turned, waving his free hand to them, and darted away.
+
+Lee laughed scornfully.
+
+"Any one he happens to meet!" she exclaimed. "He's headed straight for
+the garden, and there he'll just _happen_ to meet Phyllis. She was
+speaking of her tomatoes at breakfast, and saying that they ought to be
+ripening and that she was going to have a look at them."
+
+"Lee, darling," said Renier, "nobody can possibly see us. And when Mr.
+Heartbeat left us alone in the front room it was a frightfully long time
+ago. And sometimes a fellow's arms get to aching with sheer emptiness,
+and--and, 'this is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the
+hemlocks----'"
+
+"Are mostly birches and larches hereabouts," said Lee, and, with a happy
+laugh, she drifted into a pair of arms that closed tightly about her.
+And, "It doesn't matter if anybody does see us," she said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was characteristic of Herring that he should enter the garden by
+leaping over the fence. It was also characteristic that he should catch
+his foot on the top rail and fall at full length in a bed of very
+beautiful and much cherished phlox.
+
+Phyllis, in the path near by, gazed at the fallen man with mirth and
+anxiety.
+
+"Hurt?" she asked.
+
+He rose and examined a watch which he was carrying in his right hand.
+
+"Crystal smashed," he said, "but still going. And I've got to wait four
+minutes!"
+
+"Why have you got to wait four minutes?"
+
+"Because I promised to wait ten, and six of them have elapsed. Oh, but
+won't you be excited when I am at liberty to speak! It's more exciting
+than when we were lost in the woods, crossing the swamp that had never
+been crossed before. Meanwhile, let us calm ourselves by talking of
+something prosaic. How are the tomatoes getting on?"
+
+Phyllis put up her hand in a smiling military salute.
+
+"'General Blank's compliments,'" she said, "'and the colored troops are
+turning black in the face.'"
+
+"My favorite breakfast dish," said Herring, "is grilled tomatoes,
+preceded by raw oysters and oatmeal."
+
+"Isn't it nice," said Phyllis, "that there is money in the family after
+all, and we're going to give up The Camp as an inn?"
+
+"It would have been given up anyway," said Herring. "A determined body
+of men had so resolved in secret. There's one minute left."
+
+For some reason they found nothing to say during the whole of that
+minute. When the last second thereof had passed forever, Herring said
+simply:
+
+"Your sister Lee and Renier are going to be married."
+
+I cannot describe the expression that came over Phyllis's face. It
+wasn't exactly jealousy; it wasn't exactly the expression of a beautiful
+female commuter who has just missed her train. It wasn't a wild look, or
+a happy look, or a sad look. Perhaps it was a little bit more of an
+aching void look than anything else.
+
+Whatever its exact nature, the wily Herring studied it with an immense
+satisfaction. And then his heart began to flurry in a sort of panic.
+
+"Lee!" exclaimed Phyllis, "married! Why, they're nothing but children!"
+
+She felt something encircle her waist. She looked down and saw a hand
+and part of an arm.
+
+"What are you doing?" she asked, in a sort of daze.
+
+"I'm trying to establish a hold on you," said Herring, and toward the
+end of so saying his voice broke; "and you're not to feel lonely and
+deserted with me standing here, are you?"
+
+For a moment it seemed to Herring that Phyllis was going to extricate
+herself from his encircling arm. She achieved, indeed, a quarter
+revolution to the left and away from him.
+
+"Don't, Phyllis!" he cried. "Don't do it! I couldn't bear it!"
+
+Then she ceased revolving to the left, stopped, and from a startled,
+uncertain, half-frightened young person became suddenly a warmly loving
+young person, warmly loved, who revolved suddenly to the right, and
+became the recipient of a sudden storm of ecstatic exclamations and
+kisses.
+
+And then, nestling close to the one and only man in the world, she
+listened with complete satisfaction to his efforts to explain to her
+just how beautiful and wonderful and good she was.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+When Lee and Renier, locked in each other's arms, stood in the forest
+primeval, they were mistaken in imagining themselves to be unobserved.
+
+A short half-hour before, Mary Darling had received a proposal of
+marriage. But Mr. Sam Langham, usually so worldly-wise, had erred,
+perhaps, in his choice of time and place. Whatever a huge kitchen,
+bright with sunlight upon burnished copper, may be, it is not a romantic
+place. And, worse than this, Mary herself was not in a romantic mood.
+Certain supplies due by the morning express had not arrived. Chef was at
+the telephone shouting broken French to the butcher in Carrytown; one of
+the kitchen-maids had come down with an aching tooth, and the other had
+been sent upon an errand from which she should have long since returned.
+
+"Oh," exclaimed Mary, as Mr. Langham entered, smiling, "everything is in
+such a mess! I don't believe there's going to be any lunch to-day for
+any one. And I think I shall have a nervous breakdown!"
+
+"I told you you would long ago," said Langham, "if you didn't rest more
+and take things easier. What _does_ it matter if things go wrong once in
+a while? And if there isn't going to be any lunch, I'm glad, for one. I
+was thinking of not eating mine, anyway. And if _I'm_ not hungry, you
+can be pretty sure that nobody else is hungry. I tell you it hurts me to
+see you work so hard. I admire it and I bow down, but it hurts. You tell
+Chef to do the best he can, and you come for a brisk walk with me. We'll
+walk up an appetite, and----"
+
+"I can't _possibly_," said Mary. "I've got to stand by."
+
+"Then you go for a walk and I'll stand by. Only trust me. _I'll_ see
+that nobody goes hungry."
+
+She did not appear to have heard his offer, and Mr. Langham spoke again,
+with a sudden change of tone.
+
+"I'd like to take you out of this. I'd like to make everything in the
+world easy for you, if you would only let me. But you know that. You've
+known it all along. And knowing it, you've never even shown that it
+interested you; and so I suppose it's folly for me to mention it. But a
+man can't give up all his hopes of happiness in this world without even
+stating them, can he? I've hoped that you might get to care a little
+about me----"
+
+Mary interrupted him with considerable impatience.
+
+"Really," she said, "with Chef shouting at the telephone, and all, I
+don't know what you are driving at."
+
+At that Mr. Langham looked so hurt and so unhappy and woebegone that
+Mary was touched with remorse.
+
+"I didn't realize you were in earnest," she said. "I'm sorry I've hurt
+your feelings, but it's no use. I'm sorry--awfully sorry; but it's no
+use."
+
+"I'm sorry, too," said Langham; "sorry I spoke; sorrier there was no use
+in speaking; sorriest of all that I'm no good to any one. But as long as
+I had to come a cropper, why, I'm glad it was for no one less wonderful
+than you. Will you let things be as they were? I won't bother you about
+my personal feelings ever again by a look or a word."
+
+After he had gone Mary stood for a while with knitted brows. Chef had
+finished telephoning. The kitchen was in silence. Suddenly she broke
+this silence.
+
+"Chef," she exclaimed, "I'm no use at all! You'll just have to do the
+best you can about lunch by yourself."
+
+And she left the kitchen with great swiftness, looking like an angel on
+the verge of tears.
+
+Chef's shining red face divided into a white smile, and he began to
+bustle about and make a noise with pots and pans and carving tools, and
+to sing as he bustled:
+
+  "_Sur le pont d'Avignon_
+  _L'on y danse, l'on y danse_,
+  _Sur le pont d'Avignon_
+  _L'on y danse tout en rond--_
+  _Les belles dames font comm'ça_,
+  _Et puis encore comm'ça._"
+
+It is probable that in his gay Parisian youth Chef had known a good deal
+about _les belles dames_. He had latterly given much attention to the
+progress of Miss Darling's friendship with Mr. Langham, and that this
+same progress had received a sharp setback under his very nose concerned
+him not a little. Chef possessed altogether too much currency that had
+once belonged to that lavish tipper, Mr. Langham. And Chef did not wish
+Mr. Langham to be driven from the kitchen and The Camp. He wished Mr.
+Langham to become a permanent Darling asset--like himself and the
+French range. And so, half singing, half speaking, and furiously
+bustling, he announced:
+
+"I'll show her how little difference she makes. Without advice or
+dictation, practically without supplies of any kind, I shall arrange,
+_nom de Dieu!_ a luncheon which, for pure deliciousness, will not have
+been surpassed during the entire Christian era. I shall hint to her that
+I tolerate her in my kitchen because I have known her since she was a
+little girl, but I shall make it clear by words and deeds that her
+presence or absence is not of the least importance. Let her then turn
+for comfort to the worthy, generous, and rich Mr. Langham, for whom the
+mere poaching of an egg is an exquisite pleasure!"
+
+And he frowned and began to think formidable and inventive thoughts
+about matters connected with his craft and immediate needs and
+necessities.
+
+Mary Darling had, of late, often imagined herself receiving an offer of
+marriage from Mr. Langham. That is badly expressed. Only the most
+insufferable and self-sufficient of men make offers of marriage. Your
+true, modest, and chivalrous lover gets down on his real or figurative
+knees and begs and beseeches. She had, then, often imagined her hand in
+the act of being besought by Mr. Langham. Being a practical young woman,
+she had pictured this as happening (repeatedly) at sunset, by moonlight,
+in the depths of romantic forests or on the tops of romantic mountains.
+And some voice in her (some very practical voice) told her that it never
+should have happened in a kitchen.
+
+Mr. Langham's "sweet beseeching", instead of "moving her strangely," had
+made her rather cross. And such tenderness as she usually had for him
+had fled to cover. But now, as the clean, green forest closed about her,
+she had a reaction. She came to a dead stop and realized that she had
+been through an emotional crisis. Her heart was beating as if she had
+just finished a steep, swift climb. And her heart was aching too, aching
+for the kind and gentle friend and well-wisher to whom she had been so
+inexplicably cold and cutting. It was in vain to mourn for that diamond
+of a heart which she had rejected with so much finality. He had said
+that he would never "bother" her again (_Bother_ her! The idea!), and he
+never would. He was a man of his word, Sam Langham was. Perhaps, even
+now he was causing his things to be packed with a view to leaving The
+Camp for ever and a day. But what could she do? Could she go to him (in
+person or by writing) and in his presence eat as much as a single
+mouthful of humble-pie? No, she could not possibly do that. Then, what
+could she do? Well, with the usual negligible results, she could cry her
+eyes out over the spilt milk.
+
+She went swiftly forward, the shadows dappling her as she went, and her
+heart swelling and swelling with self-pity and general miserableness.
+Thoughts of Arthur and his happiness flashed through her mind. The
+thought that she, Mary Darling, unmarried, would in the course of a few
+years be called an old maid, caused her a panicky feeling. She pictured
+herself as very old (and very ugly), exhibiting improbable Chinese dogs
+at dog-shows and scowling at rosy babies. And I must say she almost
+laughed.
+
+The path turned sharply to the right and disclosed to Mary's eyes two
+young people who stood locked in each other's arms and rocked slightly
+from side to side--rocked with ineffable delight and tenderness.
+
+She stood stock-still, in plain view if they had looked her way, until
+presently they unlocked arms, drew a little apart, and had a good long
+look at each other, and then turned their backs upon that part of the
+forest and departed slowly.
+
+Whither she was going, Mary did not know. But she went very swiftly and
+had upon her face the expression of a beautiful female commuter who has
+arrived at the station just in time to see her train pull out. But this
+expression changed when she found her path blocked by the diminutive
+house in which Sam Langham lived, and saw Sam Langham, a look of wonder
+on his face, rise from his big piazza chair and come toward her.
+
+"Lee and Renier are going to be married," she exclaimed, all out of
+breath, "and I didn't mean to be such a brute! And I wouldn't have hurt
+you for anything in the world!"
+
+Sam Langham only looked at her, for he was afraid to speak.
+
+"I'm just an old goose," said Mary humbly, but very bravely, "and I take
+everything back. And if you meant what you said, Sam, and want to begin
+all over again, why, don't just stand there and look at me."
+
+And presently she was ashamed of herself for having been so forward, and
+so she pursued the feelings of shame to their logical conclusion and hid
+her face.
+
+And now, for the first time, she realized how hard she had worked ever
+since The Camp was changed into an inn to make it a go, and how much
+she needed rest and comforting and a masculine executive to lean on.
+
+"Who said," murmured the ecstatic Langham, "that nothing good ever came
+of liking good things to eat?"
+
+"Sam," said Mary, "I'm so happy I don't care if lunch is burned to a
+cinder."
+
+It wasn't. Out of odds and ends of raw materials, and great slugs and
+gallons of culinary genius, Chef produced a lunch that transcended even
+Mary's and Langham's belief in him.
+
+But it was Arthur who insisted that champagne be opened; and perhaps the
+champagne made the lunch seem even more delicious than it really was.
+
+Maud and Eve had already discounted Arthur's engagement and Lee's. They
+had not, it is true, learned of the latter without feeling that if they
+didn't hurry they would miss their train; but they had disguised and
+fought off that feeling until now they were their gay and natural
+selves. It remained for Mr. Langham to shock them suddenly into a new
+set of emotions.
+
+"I should be obliged," said he, rising to his feet, with a glass of
+champagne in his hand, "if everybody would drink the health of the
+happiest man present." Arthur and Renier looked very self-conscious.
+But Mr. Langham concluded: "And that man is myself. I have the honor to
+announce that, beyond peradventure, the loveliest and sweetest girl in
+all the world----"
+
+And at that Mary blushed so and looked so happy and beautiful that
+everybody shouted with joy and surprise and laughter, and drank
+champagne, and tossed compliments about like shuttlecocks. And Arthur
+and Renier and Langham had a violent dispute as to which was the
+happiest; and decided to settle the dispute with sabres at--twenty
+paces.
+
+Her first burst of surprise and excitement and pleasure having passed,
+Eve Darling experienced a sudden sinking feeling. She felt as if all the
+people she most loved to be with were going away on a delightful
+excursion and that she was being left behind. It was at this moment,
+while the uproar was still at its height, that she heard the shaken
+voice of Mr. Bob Jonstone in her ear.
+
+"How about us?" he demanded.
+
+"How about us--what?" she answered.
+
+Then she felt her hand seized and held in the secret asylum furnished by
+the table-cloth, and there stole over her the solaceful feeling of
+having been asked at the last moment to go upon the delightful
+excursion.
+
+"Eve?"
+
+"Eve, darling--is it all right?"
+
+"All right."
+
+And then up shot Mr. Jonstone like a projectile from a howitzer, and he
+cried aloud, his habitual calmness and lazy habit of speech flung to the
+winds.
+
+"You're not the only happy men in the world," he shouted. "I'm happier
+than the three of you put together, I am! Because my Darling is the best
+and most beautiful of all Darlings, and if any man dares to gainsay
+that, let him just step outside with me for five minutes--that's all."
+
+Colonel Meredith's hair bristled like the mane of a fighting terrier.
+
+"Do you mean to say," he whispered to Maud in a sort of savage whisper,
+"that I've got to swallow that insult without protest?"
+
+It was on the tip of Maud's tongue to say that she didn't know what he
+meant. But how could she say that when she knew perfectly well?
+
+"Only give me the right to answer him," continued the sincere warrior.
+He rose to his feet. "Is it yes--or no?"
+
+"It's yes--yes," exclaimed Maud and, horrified with herself, she leaned
+back blushing and full of wonder.
+
+"Mr. Jonstone--Mr. Bob--Jonstone!" cried Colonel Meredith.
+
+Mr. Jonstone's attention was presently attracted, and he gave his cousin
+a glittering look.
+
+"I'll be only too delighted to step outside with you for five minutes,"
+said Colonel Meredith.
+
+And the cousins glared and glared at each other. But whether or not they
+were really in earnest, if only for a moment, will never be known; at
+any rate, each of them appeared suddenly to perceive something comic
+about the other, and both burst into peals of schoolboy laughter.
+
+Only Gay's happiness seemed a little forced, and her mother's.
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+Gay hardly slept at all. She was at her window half the night asking
+troubled questions of the stars and of the moon and of the moonlight on
+the lake. She had not, during the summer, taken her sisters' affairs
+very seriously, perhaps because she was so seriously engrossed with her
+own. She had, even in her heart, almost accused them of flirting and
+carrying on lest time hang heavy on their hands. Her own romance she had
+supposed all along to be real, the others mere reflections of romantic
+places and situations. But it began to look as if only her own romance
+had been spurious. It was a long time since she had heard from
+Pritchard. He had told her very simply that he was now the Earl of
+Merrivale, and that, as soon as certain things were settled and
+arranged, he intended to return to America. After that, there had been
+no word from him of any kind. She tried to comfort herself with the
+thought that if he was that kind of man--blow hot, blow cold--she was
+well rid of him, and she failed dismally.
+
+A man is in love with a certain girl. He learns that she is vain, gay,
+extravagant, heartless, and going to marry some other man. Does any of
+this comfort him? Not if he is in love with her, it doesn't. Not a bit.
+
+So Gay could say to herself: "He's thoughtless and inconstant, and I'm
+well out of it!" She could say that, and she did say that, and then she
+buried her face in her pillow and cried very quietly and very hard.
+
+She was up before the sun.
+
+It would have taken more than one night of wakefulness and weeping to
+leave marks upon that lovely face which sudden cold water and the
+resolution to suffer no more could not erase.
+
+But she had not rowed a mile or more before the color in her cheeks was
+really vivid again and the whites of her eyes showed no traces of tears.
+
+She did not know why she was rowing or whither. It was as if some strong
+hand had forced her from bed before sunrise, forced her into her
+fishing-clothes, forced her into a guide boat, placed oars in her hands,
+and compelled her to row.
+
+She even smiled, wondering where she was going.
+
+"I can go anywhere I like," she thought; "but I don't want to go
+anywhere in particular, and yet I am quite obviously on my way to
+somewhere or other. I'm like Alice in Wonderland. I think I'll go to
+Carrytown and get the morning mail."
+
+But she had no sooner beached toward Carrytown than the distance there
+seemed unutterably long, especially for a rower who had yet to
+breakfast.
+
+"I know," thought Gay at last; "I'll row to Placid Brook and see if the
+big trout is still feeding in his private preserve. I'll land just where
+we did before and cross the meadow and spy on him from behind a bush. I
+wish I'd brought some tackle. I'd like to catch him and cook him for my
+breakfast--so I would!"
+
+Upon this resolution, the work of rowing became very light. It was as if
+the force which had started her upon the excursion had had Placid Brook
+in mind all the time.
+
+Having laid her course for the meadow at the mouth of Placid Brook, she
+kept the stern of the boat in direct line with a distant mountain-top,
+and so held it. The sun was now peeping over the rim of the world, and
+here and there morning breezes were darkening and dappling the burnished
+surface of the lake.
+
+Now and then, as she neared the meadow, Gay glanced over her shoulder,
+once for quite a long time, resting on her oars, because she thought
+she saw a doe with a fawn. They turned out to be nothing more tender
+than a couple of granite rocks. And once again she rested on her oars
+and looked for a long time--not this time upon the strength of a
+hallucination, but of an impulse.
+
+She followed this inconsequential act with a long sigh, and enough
+strokes of the oar to bring her to land.
+
+When she stood upright on the meadow she could see the very spot from
+which Pritchard had cast for the big trout. And she saw (and had a
+curious dilating of the heart at the same moment) that that particular
+spot of meadow was once more occupied by a human being--or were her eyes
+and her breakfastless stomach playing tricks?
+
+A young man in rusty meadow-colored clothes appeared to be kneeling with
+his back toward her. She advanced swiftly toward him, curious only of a
+great wonder and an indescribable (and possibly fatal) beating of her
+heart. And suddenly she knew that her man was real and no hallucination,
+for she perceived at her feet the stub of a Turkish cigarette, still
+smoking. Then she called to him:
+
+"Halloo, there!"
+
+The Earl of Merrivale started as if he had been shot at, then leaped to
+his feet and turned toward her with a cry of joy.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he cried.
+
+And they had approached to within touching distance of each other.
+
+"I don't know," she said. "What are you?"
+
+"It was too early to pay calls," he said, "so I thought I'd have one
+more whack at the big char and bring him to you for a present. But tell
+me--does our bet still stand?"
+
+He looked at her so tenderly and lovingly and hopefully that she hadn't
+the heart to be anything but tender and loving herself.
+
+"The bet still stands," she said, "if you win. I've missed you
+terribly."
+
+"I took him," said the earl. "I was just weighing him when you called.
+He weighs a lot more than three pounds. So I win."
+
+"Yes, you win."
+
+"And the bet still stands?"
+
+She nodded happily.
+
+"And you won't renege--you'll pay? You'll be Countess of Merrivale?"
+
+"If you want me to be," she said humbly.
+
+"If I want you to be!"
+
+And she had imagined herself so often in his arms that she was not now
+surprised or troubled to find herself there.
+
+"I was so unhappy," she said; "and now I'm so happy."
+
+And after a little while she said:
+
+"I'd like to see him."
+
+Presently they stood looking down at the great trout.
+
+"He's done a lot for us, hasn't he?" said Gay. "He was the beginning of
+things. And it seems sort of a pity----"
+
+"He's still breathing. He'll live if we put him back. Shall we?"
+
+"Yes, please."
+
+There was plenty of life and fight in the old trout. He no sooner felt
+that water was somewhere under him than he gave a triumphant, indignant
+flop, tore himself from Merrivale's hands, and disappeared with a
+splendid, smacking splash.
+
+"Good old boy!" laughed Merrivale.
+
+"And yet," said Gay, "it's a pity that we couldn't take him back to camp
+and show him off. He was the biggest trout I ever saw."
+
+"He wasn't a trout, dear," said Merrivale; and he grinned lovingly at
+her. "He was a char."
+
+"Of course he was," said Gay humbly; "I forgot."
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+I wish I could write first, "The Seven Darlings lived happily ever
+afterward," and then the word "Finis." But I cannot end so easily and
+maintain a reputation for veracity. They can't have lived happily
+afterward until they are dead--can they? At the moment they have just
+closed The Camp after the summer and scattered to their winter homes;
+that is, all of them except Gay.
+
+The Camp, of course, is no longer an inn. They run it on joint account
+for themselves and for their friends. And they have delightful times.
+
+Colonel Meredith has built a tremendous house on his ancestral acres,
+and during the winter Arthur and his wife, the Herrings, the Reniers,
+the Jonstones, and the Langhams are apt to make it their headquarters.
+
+Gay and her young man were to have visited the Merediths this winter.
+There was going to be a united family effort to discover the buried
+silver which Mr. Bob Jonstone sold to his cousin, but of course the
+great war has upset this excellent plan, together with a good many
+million other plans, even more excellent and important.
+
+The Earl of Merrivale is fighting somewhere in the wet ditches--Gay
+doesn't know exactly where. She herself, a red cross on her sleeve, is
+with one of the field-hospitals, working like a slave to save life.
+Because her husband is an Englishman, she didn't think that she could
+ever be kind to a German or an Austrian, but that turned out to be a
+whopping big error of judgment. They all look alike to her now, and her
+heart almost breaks over them. But I don't know what will become of her
+if anything happens to Merrivale. I think poor little Gay would just
+curl up and die. He is all the world to her, just as she is to him.
+
+Well, they are only one loving couple out of a good many hundred
+thousands. The times are too momentous to follow them further or waste
+words and sympathy on them. The world is thinking in big figures, not in
+units.
+
+Only a sentimentalist here and there regards as more important than
+empire and riches the little love-affairs that death is hourly ending,
+and the little babies who are never to be born.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Seven Darlings, by Gouverneur Morris
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43977 ***