"Heavens! What's all this?"

The remark, so genuine in its amazement, might under other conditions have provoked resentment but now it merely raised a laugh.

"I don't wonder you ask, sir," replied Willie, stepping forward good-humoredly. "'Tain't a common sight, I'll admit. We get used to it here an' think nothin' about it; but I reckon it must strike outsiders as 'tarnal queer."

"What are you trying to do?" queried the capitalist, still too much interested to heed conventionalities.

Simply and with artless naivete Willie explained the significance of the strings while the New Yorker listened, and as the old man told his story it was apparent that Mr. Galbraith was not only amused but was vastly interested.

"I say, Mr. Spence, you should have been an inventor," he exclaimed, when the tale was finished.

He saw a wistful light come into the aged face.

"I mean," he corrected hastily, "you should have a workshop with all the trappings to help you carry out your schemes."

"Oh, Mr. Spence has a workshop," Robert Morton interrupted. "The nicest kind of a one."

"Would you like to see it?" inquired Willie.

"I should, very much."

"I'm afraid it's no place to take you, sir," objected Celestina, horrified at the suggestion. "It ain't been swept out since the deluge. Willie won't have it cleaned. He says he'd never be able to find anything again if it was."

Mr. Galbraith laughed.

"Workshops do not need cleaning, do they, Mr. Spence?" said he. "I remember the chaos my father's tool-house always was in; it never was in order and we all liked it the better because it wasn't."

Celestina sighed and turned away.

"Ain't it just the irony of fate," murmured she to Bob, "that after slickin' up every room in the house so'st it would be presentable, Willie should tow them folks from New York out into the woodshed? I might 'a' saved myself the trouble."

Robert Morton slipped a comforting arm round her ample waist.

"Never you mind, Aunt Tiny," he whispered. "The Galbraiths have rooms enough of their own to look at; but they haven't a workshop like Willie's."

He patted her arm sympathetically and then, giving her a reassuring little squeeze to console her, followed his guests.

It had not crossed his mind until he went in pursuit of them that if they visited the shop they must perforce be brought face to face with Willie's latest invention still in its embryo state; and it was evident that in the pride of entertaining such distinguished strangers the little old man had also forgotten it, for as Bob entered he caught sight of him fumbling awkwardly with a piece of sailcloth snatched up in a hurried attempt to conceal from view this last child of his genius. He had not been quick enough, however, to elude the capitalist's sharp scrutiny, and before he could prevent discovery the eager eyes had lighted on the unfinished model on the bench.

"What are you up to here?" demanded Richard Galbraith.

There was no help for it. Willie never juggled with the truth, and even if he had been accustomed to do so it would have taken a quicker witted charlatan than he to evade such an alert questioner. Therefore in another moment he had launched forth on a full exposition of the latest notion that had laid hold upon his fancy.

Mr. Galbraith listened until the gentle drawling voice had ceased.

"By Jove!" he ejaculated. "You've got an idea here. Did you know it?"

The inventor smiled.

"Bob an' I kinder thought we had," returned he modestly.

"Bob is helping you?"

"Oh, I'm only putting in an oar," the young man hastened to say. "The plan was entirely Mr. Spence's. I am simply working out some of the details."

"Bob knows a good deal more about boats than perhaps he'll own," Mr. Galbraith asserted to Willie. "I fancy you've found that out already. You are fortunate to have his aid."

"Almighty fortunate," Willie agreed; then, glancing narrowly at his visitor, he added: "Then you think there's some likelihood that a scheme such as this might work. 'Tain't a plumb crazy notion?"

"Not a bit of it. It isn't crazy at all. On the contrary, it should be perfectly workable, and if it proved so, there would be a mine of money in it."

"You don't say!"

It was plain that the comment contained less enthusiasm for the prospective fortune than for the indorsement of the idea.

The New Yorker, however, said nothing more about the invention. He browsed about the shop with unfeigned pleasure, poking in among the cans of paint, oil, and varnish, rattling the nails in the dingy cigar-boxes, and examining the tools and myriad primitive devices Willie had contrived to aid him in his work.

"I was brought up in a shop like this," he at length exclaimed, "and I haven't been inside such a place since. It carries me back to my boyhood."

A strangely softened mood possessed him, and when at last he stepped out on the grass he lingered a moment beneath the arch of grapevine and looked back into the low, sun-flecked interior of the shop as if loath to leave it.

"I am glad to have seen you, Mr. Spence," he said, "and Miss Morton, too. Bob couldn't be in a pleasanter spot than this. I hope sometime you will let me come over again and visit you while we are in Belleport."

"Sartain, sartain, sir!" cried Willie with delight. "Tiny an' me would admire to have you come whenever the cravin' strikes you. We're almighty fond of Bob, an' any friends of his will always be welcome."

The little old man went with them to the car and loitered to watch them roll away.

"You'll see me back to-night," called Bob from the front seat.

"Not to-night, to-morrow," Roger corrected laughingly.

"Well, to-morrow then," smiled the young man.

The engine pulsed, there was a quick throb of energy, and off they sped. Almost without a sound the motor shot along the sand of the Harbor Road and whirled into the pine-shaded thoroughfare that led toward Belleport.

"A fine old fellow that!" mused Mr. Galbraith aloud. "What a pity he could not have had his chance in life."

Bob nodded.

"I suppose he hasn't a cent to carry out any of these schemes of his."

"No, I am afraid he hasn't."

The financier lit a cigar and puffed at it in thoughtful silence.

"That motor-boat idea of his now—why, if it could be perfected and boomed properly, it would make his fortune."

"Do you think so?"

"I know it."

Again the humming of the engine was the only sound.

"Do you know, Bob, I've half a mind to get Snelling down here and set him to work at that job. What should you say?"

"Snelling? You mean the expert from your ship-building plant?"

"Yes. Wouldn't it be a good plan?"

Robert Morton hesitated.

"There is no question that a man of Mr. Snelling's ability would be a tremendous asset in handling such a proposition," he agreed cautiously.

"Snelling could drop in as if to see you," went on the capitalist. "You could fix up all that so there would not be any need of the old fellow suspecting who he was. Once there he could pitch in and help the scheme along. It is going to be quite an undertaking before you get through with it, and the more hands there are to carry it out, the better, in my opinion."

"Yes, it is going to be much more of a job than I realized at first," Bob admitted. "It certainly would be a great help to have Mr. Snelling's aid. But could you spare him? And would he want to come and duff in on this sort of an enterprise?"

"If I telegraphed Snelling to come he would come; and when here he would do whatever he was told," replied Mr. Galbraith, bringing his lips sharply together.

"It's very kind of you!"

"Pooh! the idea amuses me. I'll provide any materials you may need, too. Snelling shall have an order to that effect so that he can call on the Long Island plant for anything he wants."

"That will be splendid, Mr. Galbraith; but where do you come in?"

"I'll have my fun, never you fear," returned the capitalist. "In the first place I'd like nothing better than to do that little old fellow a good turn. There is something pathetic about him. Sometimes it is hard to believe that life gives everybody a square deal, isn't it? That man, for instance. He has the brain and the creative impulse, but he has been cheated of his opportunity. I should enjoy giving him a boost. Occasionally I fling away a small sum on a whim that catches my fancy; now its German marks, now an abandoned farm. This time it shall be Mr. Willie Spence and his motor-boat idee."

He laughed.

"I appreciate it tremendously," Bob said.

"There, there, we won't speak of it any more," the elder man protested, cutting him short. "I will telegraph Snelling and you may arrange the rest. The old inventor isn't to suspect a thing—remember."

"No, sir."

"That is all, then."

With a finality Robert Morton dared not transgress, the older man lapsed into silence and Bob had no choice but to suppress his gratitude and resign himself to listening to the rhythmic beat of the automobile's great engine.



CHAPTER XI

THE GALBRAITH HOUSEHOLD

The estate the Galbraiths had leased stood baldly upon a rise overlooking the sea in the midst of the fashionable colony adjacent to Wilton, and was one of those blots which the city luxury-lover affixes to a community whose keynote is simplicity. Its expanse of veranda, its fluttering green and white awnings, its giant tubs of blossoming hydrangeas, to say nothing of its Italian garden with rose-laden pergolas, were as out of place as if Saint Peter's itself had been dropped down into a tiny New England fishing hamlet.

The house, it is true, did not lack beauty, for it was well proportioned and gracefully planned, and there was no denying that one found, perhaps, more comfort on its screened and shaded piazzas than was to be enjoyed on Willie Spence's unprotected doorstep. Nevertheless, there was too much of everything about it: too many rambler roses, too many rustic baskets and mighty palms; too many urns, and stone benches, and sundials and fountains. Still, as the car stopped at the door, the great wicker chairs with their scarlet cushions presented a gay picture and so, too, did Mrs. Galbraith and Cynthia who immediately rose from a breezy corner and came forward.

The older woman was tall and handsome and in her youth must have possessed great beauty; even now she carried with a spoiled air almost girlish the costly gowns and jewels that her husband, proud of her looks, lavished upon her. She had a languid grace very fascinating in its indifference and spoke with a pretty little accent that echoed of the South. For all her attractiveness, Cynthia could not compare in charm with her mother whose femininity lured all men toward her as does a magnet steel.

Bob leaped from the car almost before it had come to a stop and went to her side, bending low over her heavily ringed hand.

"We're so glad to see you, Bobbie!" she smiled. "The very nicest thing that could have happened was to find you here."

"It is indeed a delightful surprise for me," Robert Morton answered. "How are you, Cynthia?"

Cynthia, who was standing in the background, frowned.

"You've been long enough getting here," declared she petulantly. "Where on earth have you been? We decided you must have got stalled on the road."

"Oh, no," interrupted her father, coming up the steps. "We made the run over and back without a particle of trouble. What delayed us was that we stopped to visit with Bob's aunt and the old gentleman with whom he is staying. Such a quaint character, Maida! You really should see him. I had all I could do to tear myself away from the place."

His wife raised her delicately penciled brows.

"We do not often see you so enthusiastic, Richard."

"They are charming people, I assure you. I don't wonder Bob prefers staying over there to coming here," chuckled the financier.

"Oh, I say, Mr. Galbraith—" began Bob; but his host interrupted him.

"That is a rather rough accusation, isn't it?" declared he, "and it's not quite fair, either. To tell the truth, Bob's deep in some important work."

There was a light, scornful laugh from Cynthia.

"He is, my lady. You needn't be so incredulous," her brother put in. "Bob is busy with a boat-building project. Dad's got interested in it, too."

Cynthia pursed her lips with a little grimace.

"Ask him if you don't believe it," persisted Roger.

"Yes," went on Mr. Galbraith, "that old chap over at Wilton has an idea that may make all our fortunes, Bob's included."

There was a general laugh.

"Well," pouted Cynthia, glancing down at the toe of her immaculate buckskin shoe, "I call it very tiresome for Bob to have to work all his vacation."

"I don't have to," Robert Morton objected. "I am simply doing it for fun. Can't you understand the sport of—"

"No, she can't," her brother asserted. "Cynthia never sees any fun in working."

"Roger!" Mrs. Galbraith drawled gently.

"Well, I don't like to work," owned the girl with delicious audacity. "I detest it. Why should I pretend to like it when I don't?"

"Cynthia is one of the lilies of the field; she's just made for ornament," called Roger over his shoulder as he passed into the house.

"There is something in being ornamental, isn't there, daughter?" said Mr. Galbraith, dropping into a chair and lighting a fresh cigar.

She was decorative, there was no mistake about that. The skirt of heavy white satin clung to her slight figure in faultless lines, and her sweater of a rose shade was no more lovely in tint than was the faint flush in her cheeks. Every hair of the elaborate coiffure had been coaxed skilfully into place by a hand that understood the cunning, and wherever nature had been guilty of an oversight art had supplied the defect. Yes, Cynthia Galbraith was quite a perfect product, thought Bob, as he surveyed her there beneath the awning.

"I thought Madam Lee was here," the young man presently remarked, as he glanced about.

Mrs. Galbraith's face clouded.

"Mother is not well to-day," she answered. "Careful as we are of her she has in some way taken cold. She is not really ill, but we thought it wise for her to keep her room. She is heartbroken not to be downstairs and I promised that after she had had her luncheon and nap you would go up and see her."

"Surely!" Robert Morton cried emphatically.

"Mother is so devoted to you, Bobbie," went on Mrs. Galbraith. "Sometimes I think she cares much more for you than she does for her own grandchildren."

"Nonsense! Of course she doesn't."

"I'm not so certain," laughed the elder woman lightly. "You know she is tremendously strong in her likes and dislikes. All the Lees are. We're a headstrong family where our affections are concerned. You, Bob, are the apple of her eye."

"She has always been mighty kind to me," the young man affirmed soberly. "I never saw my own grandmothers; both of them died before I came into the world. So, you see, if it were not for borrowing Roger's and Cynthia's, I should be quite bereft."

The party rose and moved through the cool hall into the dining room.

A delicious luncheon, perfectly served by a velvet-footed maid and the old colored butler, followed, and there was a great deal of conversation, a great deal of reminiscing and a great deal of laughter.

Cynthia complained that the claret cup was too sweet and that the ices were not frozen enough and had much to say of the ice cream at Maillard's.

"But you are far from Maillard's now, my dear," her mother remarked, "and you must make the best of things."

"Being on Cape Cod you are almighty lucky to get any ice cream at all," announced Roger with brotherly zest.

"Roger, why will you tease your sister so? You hector Cynthia every moment you are in the house."

"Oh, she knows I don't mean it," grinned Roger. "I just have to take the starch out of her now and then, don't I, Cynthia Ann?"

"Roger!" fretted his sister. "I wish you wouldn't call me Cynthia Ann! I can't imagine why you've taken to doing so lately."

"Chiefly because you do not like it, my dear," was the retort. "If I were not so sure of getting a rise out of you every time, perhaps I might be tempted to stop."

"You children quarrel like a pair of apes," Mr. Galbraith said. "If I did not know that underneath you were perfectly devoted to each other, I should be worried to death about you."

"You needn't waste any worry on Cynthia Ann and me, Dad," Roger declared. "Bad as she is, she's the best sister I've got, and I rather like her in spite of her faults."

A smile passed between the two.

"You've some faults of your own, remember," observed the girl, with a grimace.

"Not a one, mademoiselle, not a one! I swear it," was the instant retort. "Coming into the family first, I picked the cream of the Lee and Galbraith qualities and gave you what was left."

"I command you two to stop your bickering," Mr. Galbraith said at last. "You are wasting the whole luncheon, squabbling. You'd much better be deciding what you are going to do with Bob for the rest of the day."

"I thought I'd take him out in the knockabout," Roger suggested. "That is, if he would like to go. The tide will be just right and there is a fine breeze."

"You may take him if you will get him home at tea time," Mrs. Galbraith said. "Your grandmother has set her heart on seeing him this afternoon and you know she retires soon after dinner."

"You wouldn't have any time to sail at all, Roger," put in Cynthia. "Especially if you should get stuck on a bar as you did the other day."

"We should have two hours."

"Why don't you take the launch, Roger?" his mother inquired.

"And get snagged in the eel grass—not on your life!"

"Bob and Mr. Spence are going to do away with all that eel grass, you know," called his father, sauntering out of doors.

"I'll wait until they do, then," was the grim retort.

"I should think Bob would a great deal rather go for a motor-ride," Cynthia ventured, her eyes fixed impersonally on the landscape.

"I suppose you'd like to cart him off in your car."

"It doesn't make any difference whose car he goes in, does it?"

"Well, ra—ther! If he goes in yours there's no room for me; if he goes in mine there is no room for you. That's the difference."

"Children, do stop tearing Bob to fragments," lisped Mrs. Galbraith with some amusement. "If you keep on pulling him to pieces he won't go anywhere. Now Roger, you take Bob sailing and have a good visit with him, and bring him back so he can have tea with your grandmother at five; this evening the rest of us will have our chance to see him."

She did not look at Cynthia, but with a woman's forethought she remembered that the verandas were roomy and that the moon was full soon after dinner. Cynthia remembered it too and smiled.

"Yes, go ahead, Roger," she called. "Take Bob round the bay. It is a lovely sail and as he hasn't been here before he will enjoy it."

* * * * * *

It was only a little past five when the two young men returned, a glow of health and pleasure on their faces.

"Now, Bobbie, do make haste," Mrs. Galbraith said, coming to meet him. "Mother's tea has already gone up, and you know how she detests waiting. Her maid is there in the hall to show you the way. Hurry along, dear boy."

Robert Morton needed no second bidding and at once followed the middle-aged English woman up the staircase and into a small, chintz-hung sitting room that looked out on the sea.

At the farther end of it, seated before a low tea table, was a stately, white-haired lady, very erect, very handsome and very elegantly dressed in a gown of soft black material. At the neck, which was turned away, she wore a fichu of filmy lace tinted by time to a creamy tone and held in place by an old-fashioned medallion of seed pearls. White ruffles at the wrists drooped over her delicately veined hands and showed only the occasional flash of a ring and her perfectly manicured finger tips. Summer or winter, fair weather or foul, Madam Lee never varied this costume, and it seemed to possess some measure of its owner's eternal youth, for it was always fresh and its lustrous folds always swept the ground in the same dignified fashion. Indeed for those who knew Madam Lee to think of her in any other guise would have been impossible. Her silvered hair was parted and rippled over her forehead to her ears where it was slightly puffed and caught back with combs of shell, and from beneath it two little black eyes peered out with a bird's alertness of gaze. Although age had claimed her strength, it was evident from the woman's vivacious expression that she had lost none of her interest in life and as she now sat before the silver-laden tea table there was a girlish anticipation in her eager pose.

"Ah, you scamp!" cried she, when she heard her visitor's footstep in the upper hall, "I have been waiting for you a full five minutes. I don't wait for every one, I would have you know. Come here and give an account of yourself."

The young man bent and softly touched her cheek with his lips.

She put out her hand and let it linger affectionately in his as he dropped into the chair beside her.

"I can't begin to tell you how glad I am to see you, Bob," she went on, in a voice soft and exquisitely modulated. "We had no idea you were on the Cape. But for that jeweler's stupidity we should have thought you had gone west long ago. Considering what good friends you and Roger are, you are the worst of correspondents; and you never write to me."

"I know it," owned Robert Morton with disarming honesty. "It's beastly of me."

"No, dear. On the contrary it is very like a man," contradicted Madam Lee with a pretty little laugh. "However, I am not going to scold you about it now. I have seen too many men in my day. First let me pour your tea. Then you shall tell me all that you have been doing. I hear you are visiting a new aunt whom you have just unearthed."

"Yes."

"How do you like her?"

Bob chuckled at the characteristic directness of the question.

"Very much indeed."

"That's nice. Since relatives are not of our choosing, it is pleasant to find they are not bores."

Again the young man smiled.

"And this old gentleman for whom she keeps house—what of him?"

It was plain Madam Lee had all the facts well in mind.

As best he could Bob sketched Willie in a few swift strokes.

"Humph! An interesting old fellow. I should like to see him," declared Madam Lee when the narrative was done. "And so you are working on this motor-boat with him?"

"Yes."

"How long have you been here?"

"Ten days."

"And when do you go back to your family?"

"I don't quite know," hesitated the big fellow. "There is still a great deal to do on this invention we are working at."

His companion eyed him shrewdly.

"And the girl—where does she live?" she asked, reaching for Bob's cup.

He colored with surprise.

"The girl?" he repeated, disconcerted.

"Of course there is a girl," went on the woman.

"What makes you think so?"

"Oh, Bob, Bob! Isn't there always a girl on every young man's horizon?"

"I suppose so—generally speaking," he confessed with a laugh.

"Suppose we abandon the abstract term and come down to this girl in particular," his interrogator said.

"Why are you so sure there is one?" he hedged teasingly.

"My dear boy, how absurd of you!" returned the sharp-eyed old lady with a twinkle of merriment. "In the first place, all the motor-boats in the world couldn't keep a young man like you chained up indefinitely in a sleepy little Cape Cod village. Besides, Cynthia told me."

"Cynthia? She doesn't know anything about it."

"That is precisely how I knew," piped Madam Lee triumphantly.

"What did she tell you?"

"She did not tell me anything," was the reply. "She simply came back from Wilton in a wretched humor and when I inquired of her whether she had her buckle back again, she answered with such spirit that there was no mistaking its cause. Of course she had the wit to know you were not wearing a belt of that pattern; nor your aunt nor Mr. Spence, either."

"The belt and buckle belong to a girl—"

"A girl! You surprise me," she murmured derisively.

Robert Morton waited a moment, then, without heeding her mischievous comment, added gravely:

"A friend of Mr. Spence's."

"I see."

The old lady smoothed the satin folds of her gown thoughtfully before she spoke, then continued with extreme gentleness:

"Tell me all about her."

"I couldn't do that," declared Robert Morton. "There aren't words enough to give you any idea how lovely she is or how good."

Nevertheless, because he had so eager and sympathetic a listener, he at length began shyly to unfold the story of Delight Hathaway's strange life. He told it reverently and with a lover's tenderness, touching on the girl's tragic advent into the hamlet of Wilton, on her beauty, and on her poverty.

"What a romance!" exclaimed Madam Lee meditatively, when the tale was done. "And they know nothing of the child's previous history?"

"Next to nothing. The girl's mother died when she was born and the little tot lived all her life aboard ship with her father."

"Had neither the father nor mother any relatives?"

"Apparently not. The mate of the ship said he had never heard the Captain mention any."

"Poor little waif! And these people who took her in have been kind to her? She is fond of them?"

"She adores them!"

The old lady stirred her tea absently.

"But, Bob dear, has the girl any education?" she inquired presently.

"That is the miracle of it!" ejaculated he. "When she was small, one of the summer residents, a Mrs. Farwell, who had a tutor for her son, suggested the two children have their lessons together. As a consequence the girl is a fine French scholar; has read broadly both foreign and English literature; is familiar with ancient and modern history and mathematics; and recently a professor from Harvard, who has boarded summers with the family, has instructed her in the natural sciences. She is much better educated than most of the society girls I've met."

"Than my granddaughter Cynthia, I dare say," was the quick comment.

"Oh—eh—"

"You need not try to be polite, Bob. I am not proud of Cynthia's education," asserted Madam Lee. "For all her wealth and all her opportunity to make herself accomplished she has never mastered one thing. If she could even sew well or keep house I should rejoice. But she can't. As for languages, music, art—bah! She is as ignorant as if she had been brought up in a home in the slums. A thin society veneer such as the typical fashionable boarding-school washes over the outside and a little helter-skelter reading and travel is all Cynthia has acquired. A real education entailed too much effort. So she is what we see her,—a thoughtless, extravagant, pleasure-seeking creature. She is a great disappointment to me, a great disappointment!"

Robert Morton did not reply.

"Come now, Bob. Why don't you agree with me?"

"I am fond of Cynthia," said the young man in a low tone.

"I know you are. Sometimes I have worried lest you were too fond of her."

There was no response.

"Cynthia is not the wife for you, my dear boy, and never was. I am older than you and I know life. Moreover, I love you very dearly. Were you of my own blood I believe I could not care more deeply for you than I do. It would break my heart to see you make a foolish marriage—to see you married to a girl like Cynthia. You never would be happy with her in the world. Why, it takes a small fortune even to keep her contented. It is money, money, money, all the time. She cares for little else, and unless a man kept her supplied with that there would be no peace in the house."

"Aren't you a little hard on her?"

"Not too hard," came firmly from Madam Lee. "You think precisely as I do, too, only you are too loyal and too chivalrous to own it."

There was a pause broken only by the tinkle of the teacups.

"No, Bob, you let Cynthia alone. She will get over it. And if you have found the jewel that you think you have, be brave enough to assert your freedom and marry her. You are not pledged to Cynthia," went on the musical voice. "Just because you two chanced to grow up together there is no reason any one should assume that the affair is settled. I suppose you are afraid of disappointing the family. Then there is your friendship for Roger—that worries you too. And of course there is Cynthia herself! Being a gentleman you shrink from tossing a girl's heart back into her lap. Isn't it so?"

"To some extent, yes."

"Would it help matters, do you think, for you to marry Cynthia if you did not love her?"

"But I care a lot for her."

"Not as you do for this other girl," said the shrewd old lady, with eyes fixed intently on his face.

"Oh, no!" was the instant reply.

"Then, as I said before, you much better let Cynthia alone," declared Madam Lee emphatically. "At her age disappointments are not fatal, and she will probably live to thank you for it. In any case it is better to blight one life than three."

Robert stared moodily down at the floor.

"This other girl is attractive, you say."

"She is very beautiful."

"You don't say so!" was the incredulous rejoinder.

"But she really is—she is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"And she has all these other virtues as well?"

She took the teacup from his passive hand and set it on the table.

"I want to see her and judge for myself," affirmed she. "I know something of beauty—and of girls, too. Why don't you bring her over here?"

"Here?"

"Why not?"

"But—but—it would look so strange, so pointed," gasped the young man. "You see she doesn't even guess yet that I—"

He heard a low, infectious laugh.

"She knew it, you goose, from the first moment you looked at her," cried the old lady, "or she isn't the girl I think her. What do you imagine we women are—blind?"

"No, of course not," Robert Morton said, joining in the laugh. "What I meant was that I never had said anything that would—"

"You wouldn't need to, dear boy." His hostess put a hand caressingly on his arm. "All you would have to do would be to look as foolish as you do now, and she would understand just as I did." Then, resuming a more serious manner, she continued: "It is a perfectly simple matter for you to bring one friend to meet another, isn't it? Tell the girl I have heard her story and have become interested in her. She will overlook an old lady's whims and be quite willing enough to come, I'm sure, if you wish it."

"I should like to have her meet you," admitted Bob, with a blush.

"You mean you would like me to meet her," answered Madam Lee, with a confiding pat on his arm. "It is sweet of you, Bob, whichever way you put it. And after I have met the charmer you shall know exactly what I think of her, too. Then if you marry her against my judgment, you will have only yourself to thank for the consequences. Now leave it all to me. I will arrange everything. In a day or two I will send the car over to Wilton to fetch you, your aunt, Mr. Spence and this Miss—what did you say her name was?"

"Hathaway."

"Hathaway! Hathaway!" echoed Madam Lee in an unsteady voice.

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh, nothing," quavered the old lady, making a tremulous attempt to regain her poise. "Only it is not a common name. I—I—knew a Hathaway once—very long ago—in the South."



CHAPTER XII

ROBERT MORTON MAKES A RESOLVE

Robert Morton returned from Belleport in a mood bordering on ecstasy, his path now clear before him. He would woo Delight Hathaway and win her, and with a strong mutual love and hope they would set forth in life together. He had, to be sure, no capital but his youth, his strength, and his education, but he did not shrink from hard work and felt certain that he would be able not only to keep want in abeyance but place happiness within the reach of the woman he loved.

Until Madam Lee, with her keen-visioned knowledge of human nature, had ranged in perspective all the tangled circumstances that had so insidiously woven themselves about him, he had been unable to see his way. The fetters that held him were so delicate and intangible that with an exaggerated sense of honor he had magnified them into bonds of steel, never daring to believe that they might be snapped and leave no scar. But now the facts stood lucidly forth. There was no actual engagement between himself and Cynthia, nor had there ever been any talk of one. He simply had been thrown constantly into her society and had drifted, at first thoughtlessly and afterward indifferently, until there had been created not only in the mind of the girl but also in the minds of all her family a tacit expectation that ultimately their permanent union would be consummated.

From the Galbraiths' point of view such a marriage would have been a very gratifying one, for although Robert Morton was without money, in his sterling character and his potentalities for success they had every faith. A span of years of intimacy had tested his worth, and had this not been the case his friendship with Roger had proved the tough fiber of his manliness. Of all their son's college acquaintances there was none who had been welcomed into the Galbraith home with the cordiality that had greeted Robert Morton. At first they had received him graciously for their boy's sake, but later this initial sufferance had been supplanted by an affectionate regard existing purely because of his own merits. They had loaded him with favors, pressed their hospitality upon him, and but for a certain pride and independence that restrained them would have smoothed his financial difficulties with the same lavishness they had those of their son.

Many a time Mr. Galbraith, unable to endure the sight of Bob's rigid self-denial, had delicately hinted at assistance, only to have the offer as delicately declined. It hurt and piqued the financier to be so firmly kept at a distance and be obliged to witness privations which a small gift of money might have alleviated; moreover he liked his own way and did not enjoy being balked in it by a schoolboy. Yet beneath his irritation he paid tribute to the self-respecting determination that had prompted the rebuff. The world in which he moved held few men of such ideals. Rather he had repeatedly been courted by the grafter, the promoter, the social climber, each beneath a thinly disguised friendship working for his own selfish ends. But here at last was the novel phenomena of one who scorned pelf, who would not even allow his gratitude to be bought. The sight was refreshing. It rejuvenated the New Yorker's jaded belief in human nature.

Forced to withdraw his bounty, he had sat back and watched while the academic career of the two young men wore on and at its close had seen the roads of the classmates divide, his own boy entering the law school, while Robert Morton, whose mind had always been of scientific trend, enrolled at Technology, there to take up post-graduate work in naval architecture. The choice of this subject reflected largely the capitalist's influence, for his own great fortune had been amassed in an extensive shipbuilding enterprise in which he saw the opportunity of placing advantageously a young man of Robert Morton's exceptional ability. The promised position was a variety of favor that Bob, proud though he was, saw no reason for declining. The opening, to be sure, would be his as a consequence of Mr. Galbraith's kindness, but the retention of the position would rest on his personal worth and hard work, a very satisfactory condition to one who demanded that he remain captain of his soul. Hence he had deliberately trained for the post and it was understood that the following October he would assume it. It was a flattering beginning for a novice, the salary guaranteed being generous and the chances for advancement alluring. Nor did the great man who had founded the business conceal from the ambitious neophyte that later he might be called upon to fill the niche left vacant by Roger's flight into professional life.

Such was the nicety with which Robert Morton had been dovetailed into the Galbraith plans, his welcome in every direction assured him. And now here he stood confronted by the probable overthrow of the whole delicately balanced structure. If he did not marry Cynthia and selected instead another bride, he risked forfeiting the regard of those who had become dear to him, imperilling his friendship with Roger, and sacrificing the brilliant and gratifying future for which he had so patiently labored. Never again, he knew beyond a question, would such an opportunity come within his grasp. He would be obliged to start out unheralded and painfully fight his way to recognition. That recognition would be his he did not doubt, for he never yet had failed in that to which he had set his hand. But, alas, the weary years before he would be able to make a hurrying universe sense that he was alive! He knew what struggle meant when stripped of its illusions, for had he not toiled for his education in the sweat of his brow? The triumph of the achievement had been sweet, but for the moment the courage to resume the weary, up-hill plodding deserted him. Why, it would be years before he could marry a girl who was accustomed to even as few luxuries as was Delight Hathaway!

And suppose a miracle happened and Mr. Galbraith was large-minded enough still to hold out to him the former offer? Should he wish to accept it? Would it not be almost charity? No, if he refused Cynthia's hand—and that was what, in bald terms, it would amount to—he must decline the other favor as well and be independent of the Galbraiths for good and all. Otherwise his position would be unendurable. It was an odious situation, the one in which he found himself. Only a cad cast a woman's heart back at her feet. The unchivalrousness of the act grated upon every fiber of his sensitively attuned, high-minded nature. Yet, as Madam Lee had reminded him, would he not be doing Cynthia a greater injustice if he married her without love. Friendship and brotherly affection were all he could honestly bestow, and although these he gave with all sincerity, as he now examined his heart in the light of the revelations real love had brought, he realized that beyond their confines existed a realm into which Cynthia Galbraith, fair though she was, had never set foot. No woman had crossed that magic threshold until now, when her presence stirred all the blended emotions of his manhood. Humility, tenderness, reverence possessed him; self descended from its throne of egoism and yielded its scepter to another; the hot blood of the primitive, untamed Viking raced in his veins. Soul, mind, heart, body were all awakened. He was a dolt who confused genuine passion with the milder preferences of callow youth.

Delight Hathaway was his mate, created for him before the hills in order stood. It was as inevitable that they should come together as that the river should sweep out to meet the sea, or the lily open to the kiss of the sunlight. All that this woman was in purity, in graciousness of heart, in brilliancy of intellect he loved, adored, approved; all that she was in physical beauty he reverenced and coveted. Her lot had been strangely cast and the scope of it limited to a very narrow vista. Oh, for success to place at her feet the riches of the earth! With such a goal to lure one on what was toil! Faugh! He laughed aloud at the word.

Madam Lee, with her unerring intuition, had probed his heart and read his destiny aright.

His future lay not with this pampered daughter of a great house whose selfishness he had repeatedly excused and refused to recognize; nor would he purchase worldly prosperity at the price of his soul. Casting aside the easier way, he would follow the rough path that mounted upward to the star of his desire. Before the waning of another moon both of these women who had come into his world should know his intentions and have the opportunity to accept or reject that which he had to offer them. He hoped Cynthia would understand and forgive; he was fond of Cynthia. And he hoped, prayed, implored Heaven that Delight Hathaway would not turn a deaf ear to his entreaties, for without the prize on which his hopes were set life's race would not be worth the running.

Well, he would not allow the thought of failure any place in his mind. Victory should be his—it would be, must be! See how all the world smiled on the vow he registered. The sky had never stretched more cloudlessly above his head; the air had never been sweeter, the dancing ripples of the bay gladder in their golden scintillations. The whole universe throbbed with youth and its dauntless supremacy. Something told him he would conquer and with a high heart he alighted at the door of the dear, familiar gray cottage.

Willie came to meet him.

"Well, son," said he, reaching forth his hands, "If I ain't glad to see you flitting home again! I've missed you like as if the two days was two weeks. I reckon your aunt has, too. Anyhow, she took to her bed quick as you was out of sight an' ain't been seen since."

"Aunt Tiny ill!"

"No, not sick exactly," explained Willie, as arm in arm they proceeded up the walk. "She's just struck of a heap with a lame shoulder such as she has sometimes. She can't move a peg, poor soul!"

"Great Scott! That's hard luck! Then since you're short-handed, I shall be more bother than I'm worth round here. I'd better have stayed where I was. You won't want any extra people to look out for and feed now, I fancy."

"Oh, law, I ain't doin' the cookin'!" grinned the little inventor, as if the bare notion of such a thing amused him vastly. "Why, I could no more cook a dish that was fit to eat than a mariner could run a pink tea. I'd die of starvation if the victuals was left to me. Let alone the cookin', we'd 'a' had to have help anyhow, 'cause Tiny's too miserable to do much for herself. So we've got in one of the neighbors."

"It's a shame!"

"Oh, we'll pull through alive," smiled Willie, cheerfully. "We've piloted our way through many a worse channel. This spell of Tiny's ain't nothin' she's goin' to die of, thank the Lord! She takes cold sudden sometimes, an' it always makes straight for that shoulder of hers, stiffenin' up every muscle in it. She'll admire to see you home again, I know. The sight of you will probably make her better right away. You can run up to her room now if you choose to. I'll be round in the shop when you want me."

With a beaming countenance the old man turned away.

Robert Morton opened the screen door diffidently, speculating as to whom he would confront in the kitchen; then he stopped, arrested on the doorsill.

At the wooden table near the pantry window stood Delight Hathaway, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, and her slender figure enveloped in a voluminous gingham pinafore that covered her from chin to ankle and was tied in place at the back by a pert bow. She was sifting flour into a mammoth yellow bowl, and as she stirred the mixture the sweep of her round white arm brought a flood of color into her cheeks and wreathed her brow with tiny, damp ringlets.

Bob held his breath, hungrily devouring her with his eyes, but a quick breeze brought the door to with a bang and the girl glanced over her shoulder.

"All hail!" she cried, the dimple darting out of hiding with her smile. "You have a new cook, monsieur."

"My word!" was all the young man could stammer.

"Is it as bad as all that?" she laughed.

"No—but—Great Hat—this is—is awful, you know."

"What is awful?" returned she, turning to face him.

"Why, having you come here and cook for us two men."

"Oh, I'm always cooking for somebody," was the matter-of-fact retort. "Why not you?"

"Well, it makes me feel like a—it doesn't seem right, somehow."

"It's as right as possible. I rather like it," said she, darting him a roguish look, then bending over the bowl before her.

"Well, you must let me help you, anyway. Can't I—I butter something?"

"Butter something!"

"Yes, things are always having to be buttered, aren't they—pans, and dishes, and cups—" he paused vaguely.

Her laugh echoed like a chime of miniature bells.

"I am sorry to say the pan is already buttered," replied she. "What other accomplishments have you?"

"Oh, I can do anything I am told," came eagerly from Bob.

"That's something, anyway. Then fetch me some flour, please."

"Flour?"

"It's in the barrel. No, that's the sugar bowl. The barrel under the shelf."

"The barrel! To be sure. Barrel ahoy! How could I have mistaken its sylph-like form? How much flour do you want?"

"Just a little."

She passed the sieve to him and went to inspect the oven.

Bob caught up the sifter, filled it to the brim, and came toward her, turning the handle as he approached.

"I say, this is great, isn't it?" he observed, so intent on the mechanism of the device that he did not notice the track of whiteness which he was leaving behind him. "It is like winding up a victrola."

Whistling a random strain from Faust he turned the handle faster.

"Oh, Bob!" burst out Delight. "Look what you're doing."

Obediently he looked but did not comprehend. Her slip of the tongue had banished every other idea from his mind.

"Say it again, please."

"What?"

"Say Bob again as you did just now."

"I—didn't know I did," faltered the girl. "I—I—forgot."

"Forgot."

He dropped the sifter into the bowl and his hand closed firmly over the one that now rested on its yellow rim.

"Oh, see what you've done!" cried she. "You have spilled all that flour into the cake."

"No matter." His eyes were on hers.

"But it does matter. Willie's cake will be spoiled."

She tried vainly to draw away from the grip that imprisoned her.

"Please let me go."

He bent across the table until he could almost feel the blood beating in her cheeks.

"Say it once more," he pleaded.

Again her hand fluttered in his strong grasp.

"Please!"

"Please what?" persisted Robert Morton.

"Please—please—Bob," she murmured.

He was at the other side of the table now, but she was no longer there. Instead she stood at the screen door, shaking the flour from her apron.

"Don't move!" she cried severely. "You've walked all through that flour and are tracking it about every step you take. Look at the pantry! I shall have to sweep it all up."

"I'll do it," he answered with instant penitence.

"No. You sit right down there in that chair and don't you stir. I will go and get the dustpan and brush."

"I'm awfully sorry," called Bob, plunged into the depths of despair. "I didn't realize that when you turned the handle of the darn thing the stuff went through."

"What did you think a flour-sifter was for?" asked she, dimpling.

"I wasn't thinking of flour-sifters," declared he significantly.

He saw her blush.

"Mayn't I please get up?"

"No. Not until your shoes are brushed off," she replied provokingly.

"Let me take the brush then."

"Don't you see I am using it?"

"You could let me take it a second."

"I have been taught to complete one task before I began another," was the tantalizing reply, as she went on with her sweeping.

"The deuce!"

"You must not swear in my presence," she commanded, attempting to conceal a smile.

"Then stop dimpling that dimple."

"Don't you like dimples?" inquired she demurely. "Now Billy Farwell thinks that my dimples—"

"Hang Billy Farwell!"

"How rude of you! Billy never consigns you to such a fate." She waited, then added, "All he ever says is 'Confound Morton.'"

"I thought he had more spirit," was the ungrateful rejoinder.

"Oh, he has spirit enough," she explained. "He would say much more if he were allowed."

She saw Robert start forward.

"Of course," she went on in an even tone, "I shouldn't permit him to abuse a friend of Willie's."

"Oh, that's the reason you put the check on him, is it?"

"Aren't you Willie's friend?" she questioned evasively.

"Yes, but—"

"You don't seem to appreciate your luck. Now I adore Willie and believe that any one who has his friendship is the most fortunate person in the world."

He saw a grave and tender light creep into her wonderful eyes.

"I'm not arguing about Willie," said he. "You know how much I care for him. But I can't think of him now. It's you I'm thinking of—you—you."

She did not answer but bent her head lower over her sweeping.

"I don't believe there is any flour on my shoes, any way," grumbled the culprit presently, stooping to examine his feet with the air of a guilty child. He thought he heard her laugh.

"How much longer are you going to keep me in this infernal chair?" he fumed.

"Bob!" called a voice from upstairs.

"It's your aunt; she must have heard you come in."

He sprang up only to come into collision with the dustpan full of flour which lay near his chair. A second more and the fruits of the sweeping drifted broadcast in a powdery cloud.

"Delight! Dearest!" he cried, bending over the kneeling figure.

"You must go upstairs and see your aunt—please!" she begged. "She will think it so strange."

"All right, sweetheart. I'm coming, Aunt Tiny."

When Willie entered a few moments later in search of his co-laborer, Delight was alone. He glanced questioningly about the room,—at the girl's flushed cheeks, the half-made cake, the snowy floor.

"Bob—Mr. Morton spilled some flour," the young woman explained, evading his eye.

The little old man made no response. He studied the burning face, the drooping lashes; he also looked meditatively at some footprints on the floor. They may not have been as startling in their significance as were the famous marks Crusoe discovered in the sand, but they were quite as illuminating.

A trail of small ones led about the room and beside them, as if echoing to their light tread, was a series of larger ones. The inventor's gaze pursued them curiously to a spot before the stove where they became very much confused and afterward branched apart, the larger set trailing off toward the stairs, and the smaller moving back into the pantry.

The detective stroked his chin for an interval.

"U—m!" observed he thoughtfully.



CHAPTER XIII

A NEWCOMER ENTERS

The next day Mr. Howard Snelling made his appearance at the Spence workshop.

Bob was fitting wire netting to some metal uprights and struggling to focus his mind on what he was doing enough to forget that Delight Hathaway was on the other side of the partition when from the window above the bench he saw Cynthia Galbraith come rolling up to the gate in her runabout, accompanied by a strikingly handsome stranger.

He hurried out to meet them.

Her father and Roger, the girl said, had gone to a yacht race at Hyannis, so she had brought Mr. Snelling over. She introduced the two men but refused somewhat curtly to come in, explaining that she would be back, or some one else would, to fetch the guest home to Belleport for luncheon. Then, without a backward glance, she started the engine and disappeared around the curve of the Harbor Road.

Perhaps it was just as well, Robert Morton reflected, that she had not accepted his invitation to come in, for to bring her and Delight together at this delicate juncture might result in awkwardness; nevertheless, it certainly was something unprecedented for Cynthia to be so brusque and be in such a hurry. The enigma puzzled him, and he found it recurring to his mind persistently. However, he resolutely shook it off and turned his attention instead to his new acquaintance.

He was, he could not but admit, quite unprepared to find Mr. Howard Snelling, his future chief, possessed of so attractive a personality. Mr. Galbraith, when alluding to the expert craftsman, had never mentioned his age, and Bob had gleaned the impression that the man before whose ability the entire Galbraith shipbuilding plant bowed down was middle-aged, possibly even elderly. Therefore to be confronted by some one in the early forties was a distinct shock.

Snelling's hair was, to be sure, sprinkled lightly with gray, but this hint of maturity was given the lie by his ruddy, unlined countenance and the youthfulness with which he wore his clothes. A good tailor had evidently found a model worthy of his skill and had tried to live up to the task set him, for everything in the stranger's attitude and appearance proclaimed smartness and the savoir faire of the man about town. Yet Howard Snelling was something far better than either a fashion plate or a society darling. He was energy personified. It spoke in every motion of his strong, fine hands, in the quick turn of his head, in the alert attention with which he listened. Nothing escaped his well-trained eye. One's very thoughts seemed to be at his mercy. Mingling, however, with these more astute qualities and counterbalancing them was a winning tact and courtesy which instantly put another at his ease. Without these characteristics Mr. Snelling would have been unbearable; but with them he was thoroughly charming.

"Well, Morton, I am glad to have a chance to meet you in the flesh," he said, as they still loitered at the gate. "The Galbraiths have sung your praises until I began to think you a sort of myth. You certainly have something to live up to if you are to reach the reputation they have painted of your virtues. Mr. Galbraith, in particular, thinks there is no obstacle that you cannot conquer."

He swept his eye curiously over the young man before him.

"You mustn't believe a word of what they've told you, Mr. Snelling," laughed Robert Morton. "Our friends are always over-indulgent to our faults. When I begin work under you, a thing I am greatly anticipating, you will find out what a duffer I really am."

The elder man smiled.

"I'm ready to take the chance," said he.

"Besides," Bob went on, "Mr. Galbraith has given you something of a character too. He has frightened me clean out of my life with his tales of your—"

"Pooh! Nonsense!" broke in Mr. Snelling deprecatingly. "I like my job, that's all; and Mr. Galbraith and I happen to hit it off." Nevertheless Bob could see that he was pleased by the flattery.

It was on his tongue's end to voice his thought and add that the man who could not get on with a person of Mr. Snelling's adroitness and diplomacy would be hard to please; but although he did not utter the words he felt them to be true.

"Now," began the New Yorker with a swift change of subject, "let us get down to business. How are we going to work this thing? You must coach me. I gather I am being employed on quite a delicate mission. My instructions are to come in here as a friend of yours and the Galbraiths, and without raising the suspicion that I have much of any knowledge about boats, I am to help get this invention into workable shape. Any parts we lack, any drawings we wish made, any materials we need I have authority to procure from our Long Island plant. There is to be no stint as to expense. The enterprise is to be carried through to the finish properly."

Robert Morton gasped.

"I had no idea Mr. Galbraith meant to go into it to such lengths," he murmured.

"Oh, Mr. Galbraith never does things by halves when once he is interested," was the reply. "Besides, he has a hunter's scent for the commercial. He says there is a live idea here that has money in it, and that's enough for him. Anyway, whether there is or not," Snelling added hurriedly, "we are to humor the old gentleman's whims and get his idea so he can handle it."

"It is tremendously generous of Mr. Galbraith."

Howard Snelling regarded his companion quizzically for a moment, then remarked with gravity:

"Oh, there is a kind heart in Mr. Galbraith, in spite of all his business instincts."

"Had you ever met the rest of the family before now?" questioned Bob more with a desire to turn the channel of conversation than because he had any interest in the matter.

The inquiry, idly made, produced an unexpected result, visibly throwing the expert out of his imperturbable composure; he flushed, stammered, and bit his lip before he successfully conquered his confusion:

"I—eh—oh, yes," was his reply. "I've been a dinner guest at the New York house several times; been sent for on a pinch to help out. Then Mr. Galbraith summons me there occasionally for consultation on business matters. The Belleport place is attractive, isn't it?"

"It's corking!"

"I suppose you spend a lot of time over there," ventured Snelling, lighting a gold-tipped Egyptian cigarette and offering Bob one.

Something in the question, he could not have told what, caused Robert Morton to dart a quick, furtive glance at the speaker.

Mr. Snelling was smoking and blowing indifferently into the air filmy rings of smoke, but through it the disconcerted young man encountered his penetrating gaze.

"I don't get over there very often," said Bob. "This invention keeps me rather busy."

"Of course, of course!" was the cordial response. "And now as to our policy on this deal. I shall follow your lead, understand. Any assertion you see fit to make you can trust me to swear to. You may introduce me to the old chap as your college pal, even your long-lost brother, if you choose."

"I hardly think that will be necessary," Robert Morton answered, a hint of coldness in his voice. "I shall simply introduce you for what you are, Mr. Galbraith's friend—"

"And yours," smiled Mr. Snelling, graciously placing a hand on the young man's shoulder.

It was unaccountable, absurd, that Bob should have shrunk at the touch; nevertheless he did so.

"Don't you think," he replied abruptly, "that the sooner we go in and get to work the better? How long do you expect to be able to stay here?"

Again the color crept into Snelling's cheek, but this time he was quite master of himself.

"I cannot tell yet. It will depend to some extent on how we get on."

"I suppose you really can't be spared from the Long Island plant a great while."

"As to that, Mr. Galbraith is all-powerful," was his smiling answer. "What he wills must be arranged. Fortunately just now business is running slack, at least my part of it is. Most of our contracts are well on the way to completion and others can carry them out, so I can stay down here as long as is necessary. It can go as my vacation, if worst comes to worst. Hence you see," concluded he, pulling a spray of honeysuckle to pieces, "we don't need to rush things."

They entered the gate, passed the low, silvered house now almost buried in blossoming roses, and following the clam-shell path that led to the workshop found Willie, his spectacles pushed back from his forehead, dragging a pile of new boards down from the shelf.

"We have a visitor, Mr. Spence," Bob said. "Mr. Snelling, a friend of Mr. Galbraith's and—" he paused the fraction of a second, "and of mine. He has come over to spend the morning and wants to see what we're doing."

The little old inventor reached out a horny palm.

"I'm glad to see you, sir," affirmed he simply. "Any friend of Bob's won't want for a welcome here. Set right down an' make yourself to home, or stand up an' poke found, if it suits you better. That's what Mr. Galbraith did. I reckon there warn't a corner of this whole place he didn't fish into. 'Twas amusin' to see him. He said it took him back to the days when he was a boy. I couldn't but smile to watch him fussin' with the plane an' saw an' hammer like as if they was old friends he hadn't clapped eyes on for years."

"It does feel good to handle tools when you haven't done so for a long time," assented Mr. Snelling.

"Likely you yourself, sir, ain't had a hammer nor nothin' in your hands for quite a spell," went on Willie, with a benign smile. "They don't look as if you ever had had."

Howard Snelling glanced down at his slender, well-modelled hands with their carefully manicured nails.

"I haven't done much carpentry of late years," he confessed. "It would be quite a novelty were I to be turned loose in a place like this. I should like nothing better."

"You don't say so!" responded Willie, with pleased surprise. "Well, well! Ain't that queer now? I'd much sooner 'a' put you down as a gentleman who wouldn't want to get into no dirt or clutter."

"You don't know me."

"Evidently not," the old man rejoined. "Well, you can have your wish fur's carpenterin' goes. You can putter round here much as you like."

Mr. Snelling moved toward the long workbench.

"This is a neat thing," remarked he, regarding the unfinished invention quite as if he had never heard of it before. "What are you doing here?"

A glow of satisfaction spread over the little fellow's kindly face.

"Why, me an' Bob," he explained, "are tinkerin' with a notion I got into my head a while ago. The idee kitched me in the night, an' I come downstairs an' commenced tacklin' it right away. But I didn't see my course ahead, an' 'twarn't 'til Bob hove in sight an' lent a helpin' hand that the contraption begun to take shape. But for him 'twould never have amounted to a darn thing, I reckon. I ain't much on the puttin' together, anyhow, an' this was such a whale of a scheme it had me floored. But it didn't seem to strike Bob abeam. He went at it like a dogfish for bait, an' he's beginnin' to tow the thing out of the fog now into clear water."

"It's quite a scheme," observed Snelling, with an assumed nonchalance. "How did you happen on it?"

"Them idees just come to me," was the ingenuous reply. "Some brains, like some gardens, grow one thing, some another. Mine seems to turn out stuff like this."

"It's pretty good stuff."

"It's a lot of bother to me sometimes," said the old man simply. "Still, I enjoy it. I'd be badly off if it warn't for the thinkin' I do. What a marvel thinkin' is, ain't it? You can think all sorts of things; can travel in your mind to 'most every corner of the globe. You can think yourself rich, think yourself poor, think yourself young, think yourself happy. There's nothin' you want you can't think you have, an' dreamin' about it is 'most as good as gettin' it."

Mr. Snelling nodded.

"Sometimes I think myself an artist, sometimes a musician," went on the wistful voice. "Then again I think myself a great man an' doin' somethin' worth while in the world. Then there's times I've thought myself with a family of children an' planned how they should learn mor'n ever I did." He mused, then banishing the seriousness of his tone by an embarrassed laugh added, "I've waked up afterward to think how much less it cost just to imagine 'em."

The heart that would not have been won by the naivete of the speaker would have been stony indeed!

Howard Snelling flashed a tribute of honest admiration into the gentle old face.

"Dreams are cheap things," rambled on the little inventor. "Sometimes I figger the Lord gave 'em to those who didn't have much else, so'st to make 'em think they are kings. If you can dream there ain't a thing in all the world ain't yours."

The conversation had furnished Snelling with the opportunity to study more minutely the object on the table, and he now said with a motion of his hand toward it:

"Wouldn't it be rather nice if you had some netting of coarser mesh and which wouldn't corrode?"

"Oh, this screenin' ain't what I'd choose," returned Willie, "but 'twas all I had. I ripped it off the front door. Tiny didn't fancy my doin' it very well. 'Tain't often she's ruffled, an' even this time she didn't say much; still, I could see it didn't altogether please her."

"Tiny?" interpolated Mr. Snelling.

"My aunt, Miss Morton, who keeps house for Mr. Spence," explained Bob with proud directness.

"I wasn't aware you had relatives down here," the boat-builder observed, turning toward Robert Morton with interest. "I imagined you came to the Cape because of the Galbraiths."

"Oh, no. I didn't know the Galbraith's were here until the other day."

"Really!"

The single word was weighted with incredulousness.

"'Twas the funniest thing you ever knew how it happened," put in Willie.

Robert Morton tried to cut him short.

"A package for the Galbraiths was sent to me by mistake; that was how I secured their address," he said.

Snelling looked puzzled.

"That warn't it at all, Bob," persisted Willie. "You ain't tellin' it half as queer as 'twas."

It was useless to attempt to check the little old man now. Artlessly he babbled the story, and Howard Snelling, listening, constructed a good part of the romance interwoven with it from the young man's color and irritation.

"So there were two beauties in the case!" commented he, when the tale was finished.

"There were two silver buckles," came sharply from Bob.

"Which amounts to the same thing," smiled the New Yorker.

Robert Morton vouchsafed no reply.

"Have your friends the Galbraiths met this—other lady?" asked Snelling insinuatingly.

"No, not yet."

"I see."

There was something offensive in the observation; something, too, that compelled Robert Morton even against his will to add with dignity:

"I am expecting to take Miss Hathaway over to see them some day soon."

He told himself, as he uttered the words, that he owed Howard Snelling no explanation and that it was ridiculous of him to make one; nevertheless he felt impelled to do so.

Mr. Snelling smiled superciliously.

"That will be very pleasant, won't it?" he remarked.

One could not have quarreled with the sentiment, but its blandness conveyed an exasperating disbelief.

The young man bit his lip angrily.

At the same instant there was a sound at the door.

"Aunt Tiny wants to know—"

The three men glanced up simultaneously, and Mr. Snelling's jaw dropped with amazement.

"I beg your pardon," murmured Delight. "I did not know there was any one here."

"It's only Mr. Snelling, a friend of Bob's," Willie hastened to say.

"Mr. Snelling is also a friend of Mr. Galbraith's," interrupted Robert Morton, enraged that it fell to him to perform the introduction. "This is Miss Hathaway, Mr. Snelling."

"I am charmed to meet you, Miss Hathaway," Howard Snelling declared, bending low over the girl's outstretched hand. "I did not realize you were an inmate of the house." Then with a sidelong glance at Bob he added: "Wilton certainly abounds in beautiful surprises."

As with unveiled wonder he scanned the exquisite face, Robert Morton, looking on, could have strangled him with a relish.



CHAPTER XIV

THE SPENCES ENTER SOCIETY

For a week Howard Snelling came and went from the small, vine-covered cottage on the bay, making himself so useful and so delightful that the charm of his personality gradually obliterated the first unpleasant impression Bob had gained of him. He worked hard but worked with such unobtrusiveness that unless one scrutinized him closely the subtle power that lay behind his hand and brain might have passed unsuspected. Ever mindful that his role was that of the casual visitor, he listened with appreciation to Willie's harmless gossip and whenever the little old man advanced a theory as to the enterprise in which they were engaged he greeted it not only with respect but with cordiality. Now and then as the undertaking progressed, he ventured a tactful, almost diffident suggestion, the value of which the inventor was quick to detect. Also, in the same nonchalant fashion, he produced from time to time the necessary materials, weaving a fairy web of prevarication when questioned too closely as to their source.

"Oh, I have a friend in the boat-building business," said he, "who lets me have any small things I want. I have done some favors for him in the past and he is only too glad to square up the balance by sending me whatever I ask him for."

The explanation, given with off-hand candor, quite satisfied the artless Willie, who imagined all the world as truthful as himself and inquired no further, accepting with unfeigned joy the gifts the gods provided. His face glowed with almost beatific light as he saw his dream slowly take form. Nothing he had ever done equalled this masterpiece. The project was his first thought at waking, the last before closing his eyes at night. Sometimes, even, when all but the sea slept, he would tiptoe downstairs, candle in hand, just to steal a glance at the child of his fancy. So absorbed was he in its growth and progress that it never crossed his mind to marvel that two men of Howard Snelling's and Robert Morton's ability should sacrifice to the invention the golden hours of the rare June days. Their interest was nothing miraculous. Who wouldn't have been interested in such a wonderful undertaking?

Indeed, Mr. Snelling's concern for the venture was almost as keen as his own. From morning until late noon he toiled. Occasionally the Galbraiths' chauffeur brought him over from Belleport, but more often it was Cynthia who made the trip with him. Mr. Galbraith, it appeared, had been called back to New York on urgent business; Roger had gone with friends on a yachting cruise; and Mrs. Galbraith was devoting her time to her mother who was still indisposed. Hence Cynthia was forced to fill the gaps and serve both as host and hostess. It was a natural situation, and Bob thought nothing about it except selfishly to exult that under the conditions Cynthia was kept too busy to invade the Spence home or bother him with invitations. And that was not the only boon that came with Snelling's presence, for with three workers in the shop Robert Morton found not infrequent chances to steal into the kitchen, where Delight was busy with household tasks, and enjoy the rapture of a word or two with her.

Never were there such days of enchantment as these! He might, he often said to himself, have remained in Wilton an entire summer and his acquaintance with the lady of his heart never have reached the degree of intimacy that it attained during Celestina's illness. To behold the girl, fair as the new-blown rose, presiding at the wee breakfast table was to forget all else. How dainty she looked in her trim cotton gown, with its demure cuffs and collar of white, and how deftly her hands moved among the simple fittings of the table! The worn agate coffee-pot seemed transformed to classic outline, and the nectar it contained to ambrosia. And what a famous little cook she was! Surely such flaky biscuit could never have been made by other hands. Bob suddenly became surprisingly interested in kitchens and all that they contained. The glint of tin pans, the dull ebony of the stove, iridescent suds foaming fresh and hot,—all these took on a strange and homely beauty quite novel in its charm. He had never dreamed before what an incomparable Eden a kitchen was!

To slip in and fill the wood-box; to creep into the pantry and watch the beloved head as it bent over the baking table; to be permitted to wipe the dishes while She washed them made of the simple duties tasks for gods and goddesses. He loved the pretty way her fringed lashes lifted, the wave of color that swept her cheek when she was startled by his step; and there was something ravishingly confidential in her caution:

"Be careful, Bob, not to drop Aunt Tiny's china teacups."

It was all foolish and inconsequential—the sighs, the smiles, the silences—but they made a paradise of the grim old universe. Many a time he longed to press his lips to the white arm, to kiss the warm curve of her neck where soft curls clustered. But he did none of these things. By a gentle reserve the girl kept him at his distance, and although there was only Jezebel to see, he did not transgress the bounds Delight's sweet womanliness reared between them. Of course she knew he loved her. She could not but know. Even Jezebel from her round blue eyes proclaimed a complete understanding of the romance and drawing herself into a fluffy ball in Willie's great chair feigned sleep that she might not embarrass the lovers. The canary knew, and so did the impertinent crimson rambler that clambered up the window frame and spied in through the pane. It was no secret. The whole dazzling world shared in the exquisite mystery.

Were the tale to have been put into words half its delicate beauty would have been shattered. It was now a thing of clouds, of perfume, of sunshine. The waves whispered together of it; the birds trilled the story. A glance, a half-uttered sentence, the meeting of hands carried with them great throbbing reaches of emotion that went to make up the reality of the ephemeral drama. And then there was the tormenting, bewitching, wretched, alluring uncertainty of it all. One could never be sure, and in the spell of this disquietude lay half the magic.

Robert Morton speculated as to whether Willie, along with Jezebel and the canary, had fathomed the idyl. He wondered, too, how much Snelling suspected. The New Yorker had an irritating habit of waylaying Delight and making pretty speeches to her, as if for the wanton pleasure of watching the blush rise in her cheek. When it came to women there was no denying Howard Snelling was as great an authority as at building ships. He understood the sex and knew what pleased them, and with the subtle art of a courtier he breathed into their ears a flattery too delicate to be resented. Beside such an expert Bob, floundering in his first real love affair, felt but a blunderer. Perhaps Mr. Snelling realized this and rather enjoyed the amateur's chagrin. However that may have been, he certainly let no opportunity slip for the display of his proficiency. The discomfited lover fumed with jealous rage; yet on analyzing the causes of his wrath he discovered he actually had but scant ground for complaint. He was not engaged to Delight, and until he was he had no claim upon her and not the smallest right in the world to grumble if another man chose to pay her a compliment. And what were compliments anyway? Only empty words. Yet reason as he would, he wished Snelling twenty fathoms deep in the sea before ever he had come to Wilton, there to haunt Willie's shop and make of himself a menace to all tranquillity.

So the days passed in a delirious alternation of ecstasy and despair until one morning when Mr. Snelling came bringing from Madam Lee the long-delayed note which she had promised Bob she would send. She was now quite strong again, she wrote, and she wished him to arrange for his aunt, Mr. Spence and Miss Hathaway to come and have tea with the Belleport family on the following afternoon, when both Roger and Mr. Galbraith would be at home. With beating heart Robert Morton took the letter into the house and showed it to Delight.

"How nice of them!" she exclaimed. "Oh, I do wish we could go! Willie would love it. He liked Mr. Galbraith and his son so much! And Aunt Tiny would be in the seventh heaven if only she were able to accept. She so seldom has an invitation out, poor dear!"

"And you?"

"Oh, I couldn't go anyway."

"Why not?"

"Well, in the first place, I have nothing to wear to a place like that."

"Delight!"

"And besides," she hurried on, "they are only asking me because I happen to be here in the house."

"Indeed they're not!"

"But I know they are," persisted the girl. "Everybody doesn't want to see me just because you—"

"Because I what?" demanded Bob, with an ominous stride in her direction.

"Because you—and Mr. Snelling like me," concluded she tranquilly.

"Confound Snelling!"

"Indeed, no. He is a charming gentleman, and I won't have him confounded."

"Hang him then."

"Nor hanged either," she protested.

"Of course if you prefer Mr. Snelling—" began Robert Morton stiffly.

She broke into a teasing laugh.

"I may not prefer him, but nevertheless I will own he is the most wonderful specimen of masculinity that my eyes have ever beheld. Remember Wilton is a small place, pitifully limited in its outlook, and that I have not traveled the wide world to view the wonders it contains. Hence Mr. Snelling is to me like the Eiffel Tower, the Matterhorn, the tomb of Napoleon, or Fifth Avenue at Easter—something illustrious and novel."

"He is nothing so fine as any of those," snapped Bob.

"Oh, I don't know," was the provoking answer.

Robert Morton bit his lip and moved toward the door, but he had not got further than the sill before she whispered:

"Bob!"

Resolutely he held his peace.

"Please be nice, Bob," she cooed.

Ah, he was back again, but she had retreated behind the tall rocker.

"I suppose," she observed, hurtling the words over Jezebel's sleeping form, "that your aunt will be heartbroken to miss this party. Why don't you run upstairs and let her read the note? Then we can send our regrets when Mr. Snelling goes back to Belleport this noon."

Obediently the young man sped to do her bidding, and soon Delight heard his voice calling from the upper hall.

"She won't send her regrets. She says she's going. I tell her they will ask her another time, but she insists she feels lots better and was thinking of getting up, anyway. She wants to start putting fresh cuffs on her black cashmere this minute, and do I don't know what. You'd better come up and stop her."

But Celestina was not to be stopped. Go she would!

"My shoulder's 'most well anyhow," she affirmed, "an' I had planned to go down to supper. Do you think for one minute I'd miss a junket like this? Why, I'd go if it killed me! The Galbraiths are nice folks an' have been good to Bob and Willie. Besides," she added with ingratiating candor, "I want to see where they live. An' they're goin' to send the automobile for us, that great red one—imagine it! I ain't been in an automobile more'n six times in my whole life. Do you think I'd send my regrets? I'd go if I had to be carried on a stretcher!"

Delight and Robert Morton laughed at her enthusiasm.

"Now you trot straight down stairs, Bob," went on Celestina energetically, "an' write Mis' Lee we'll admire to come, all of us."

"But Aunt Tiny," put in Delight, "I'm not going. Somebody must stay here and look after the house."

"What for?" Celestina demanded. "The house won't run away, an' if thieves was to ransack it from attic to cellar they'd find nothin' worth carryin' away. Ridiculous!"

"She says she hasn't anything to wear," interrupted Bob.

"Delight Hathaway! For shame!" said the elder woman, raising a reproving finger. "You always look pretty as a picture in anything. Some folks need fine clothes to set 'em off but you don't. Don't be silly! Why, half the pleasure of Willie an' me would be wiped out if you didn't go, an' likely Bob would be disappointed, too."

"You bet I would!"

"W—e—ll," the girl yielded.

"There, that's right, my dear." Celestina reached out and patted the slender hand. "Now, Bob, you go along an' write your letter," commanded she. "An' Delight, you bring me up some hot water an' fetch my clean print dress from the hall closet. I kinder think, come to mull it over, that there's fresh cuffs on my cashmere already, but you might look an' see. An' hadn't we better furbish up my bonnet this afternoon? It ain't been touched this season."



CHAPTER XV

A REVELATION

The morning of the pilgrimage to Belleport was a hectic one in the gray cottage on the bluff. Before breakfast Celestina began preparations, appearing in the kitchen without trace of invalidism and helping Delight hurry the housework out of the way, that the precious hours might be spent in retrimming the hat of black straw which already had done duty four seasons.

"Ain't it too vexatious," complained the irritated convalescent, "that I don't wear out nothin'? This hat, now—it's as good as the day it was bought, despite my havin' had it so long. I can't in conscience throw it away an' get another, much as I'd like to. The trimmin' was on the front the first summer, don't you remember? Then we tried it on behind a year; an' there was two seasons I wore it trimmed on the side. What are we goin' to do with it now, Delight? I've blacked it up an' can see no way for it this time but to turn it round hindside-before. What do you think?"

The amateur milliner shook her head.

"I've a plan," she smiled mysteriously. "Don't you worry, Aunt Tiny."

"Oh, I shan't worry, child, if you take it in hand. I know that when you get through with it it's goin' to look as if it had come straight out of Mis' Gates's store over at the Junction. It does beat all what a knack you have for such things. You could make your fortune bein' a milliner. I s'pose you wouldn't want to face it in with red, would you? Willie likes red, an' there's a scrap of silk in the trunk under the eaves that could be stretched into a facin' with some piecin'."

"I'm afraid you wouldn't like red, Aunt Tiny," the girl replied gently.

"Mebbe I wouldn't," was the prompt answer. "Well, do it as you think best. You never put me into anything yet that warn't becomin', an' I reckon I can risk leavin' it to you."

"Wouldn't you rather I helped you clear up the kitchen before I began hat trimming?"

"Mercy, no! Don't waste precious time sweepin' up an' washin' dishes; I can do that. Like as not 'twill take some of the stiffness out of me. Besides, the work an' the millinery ain't the worst ahead of us. There's Willie to get ready. To coax him out of that shop an' into his Sunday suit is goin' to take some maneuverin'. I know, 'cause I have it to do once in a while when there's a funeral or somethin'. It's like pullin' teeth. There's times when I wish all his jumpers was burned to ashes. An' as for his hair, he rumples it up on end 'till there's no makin' it stay down smooth an' spread round like other folks's."

"Oh, we mustn't try to dress Willie up too much," protested Delight. "I like him best just as he is."

"Mebbe you do," the elder woman grumbled, "but the Galbraiths ain't goin' to feel that way. Why, what do you s'pose they'd think if Willie was to come prancin' over there for a dish of tea lookin' as he does at home? They'd be scandalized! Besides, ain't you an' me goin' to be dressed up? Ain't I got my new hat?"

"Not yet," was the mischievous retort.

"But I am goin' to have. No, sir! If I begin indulgin' Willie by lettin' him go all wild to this party in his old clothes, the next time there's a funeral there'll be no reinin' him in. He'll hold it up forevermore that he went to the Galbraiths in his jumper. I know him better'n you do."

"I suppose so."

"An' I'm firmer with him, too," went on Celestina. "You'd have him clean spoiled. I ain't sure but you've spoilt him already past all help durin' these last ten days. Did you hear him at breakfast askin' me to open his egg? He knows perfectly well I never take off the shell. All I ever do for him is to put in the butter, pepper, an' salt; an' I only do that 'cause he's squizzlin' so to get out in that shop that he ain't a notion whether there's fixin's on his egg or not. Let him get one of these ideas on his mind an' it's a wonder he don't eat the egg, shells an' all."

"Poor dear!" The girl's face softened.

"You pet him too much," said Celestina accusingly.

"Don't you pet Willie a little yourself, Aunt Tiny?" teased Delight. "You know you do. Everybody does. We can't help it. People just love him and like to see him happy."

"I know it," the woman admitted. "Why, there's folks in Wilton (I could name 'em right now) who would run their legs off for Willie. Look at Bob an' this Mr. Snellin' sweatin' in that shop like beavers over somethin' that ain't never goin' to do 'em an ounce of good—mebbe ain't never goin' to do anybody no good. There's somethin' in him that sorter compels people to stand on their heads for him like that. I often try to figger out just what it is," she mused. Then in a brisker tone she asked: "How's the hat comin'?"

"Beautifully."

"That's good. Hurry it right along, for I'm plannin' to have dinner at twelve an' get it out of the way."

"But the car isn't coming for us until three o'clock."

"'Twill take that time to wash up the dishes an' rig Willie up."

"Not three hours!"

"You don't know him. We'll have our hands full to head him away from that thing he's makin'. All I pray is no new scheme ketches him while he's dressin', for 'twill be all day with the party if it does."

Fortunately no such misadventure befell. Willie was corralled, his protests smothered, and he was led placidly away by Bob, to emerge after an interval resigned as a lamb for the slaughter. Even the homespun suit could not wholly banish his native charm, for after it was once on he forgot its existence and wore it with an ease almost too oblivious to suit Celestina.

Not so she! On the contrary she issued from her chamber conscious of every article of finery adorning her plump person. She settled, unsettled, resettled her hat a dozen times, and tried no less than a score of locations for her large cameo pin. Her freshly washed lisle gloves had unfortunately shrunk in the drying and refused to go on at the finger tips, and from each digit projected a sharply defined glove end which kept her busy pushing and pulling most of the afternoon. So occupied was Delight with tying Willie's cravat and rearranging the spray of flowers on Celestina's bonnet that she had not a moment to consider her own toilet which was hastily made after everything else was done. Yet as Robert Morton looked at her, he thought that nothing could have graced her more completely than did her simple gown of muslin. There was in the frock a demureness almost Quaker-like which as a foil for her beauty breathed the very essence of coquetry. What lover could have failed to feel proud of such a treasure?

Nevertheless, Bob had his qualms about the prospective visit. He was not concerned for Willie or Celestina. They were what they were and any one of discrimination would recognize their worth. Nor did he entertain fears for Delight or the Galbraiths. All of them could be relied upon to meet the situation with ease and dignity. But Cynthia—what would be her attitude? Of late, when she had come over in the car with Mr. Snelling, she had maintained a distant politeness which would have been amusing had it not been ominous. He wondered how she would conduct herself today, not alone toward him but toward the girl whom she could not but regard as her rival. How much did she guess, he speculated, of the romance that was taking place in the rose-covered cottage on the bluff. And if she had guessed nothing, might not Snelling, leaping at conclusions, have gone back to Belleport there to spread idle gossip of the love-story? What would Howard Snelling know of the delicate situation 'twixt himself and Mr. Galbraith's daughter? And even though no rumors of the affair reached Cynthia at all, Robert Morton was old enough to sense the hazard of introducing one woman to another.

Well, the risk must be taken; there was no escape from it now. Even as these disquieting imaginings chased themselves through his mind, the car stopped before the door and Roger Galbraith, who had come to meet the guests, entered at the gate. No courtesy that would add to their comfort had been omitted. There were rugs and extra wraps, and a drive along the shore road had been planned as an added pleasure.

Willie, his back actually turned on his beloved workshop, was in the seventh heaven.

"What you settin' on the peaked edge of the seat for, Celestina?" he asked when once they were in the automobile. "The thing ain't goin' to blow up or break down. Let your whole heft sink into the cushions an' enjoy yourself. 'Tain't often you get the chance to go a-ridin'."

His joy in the novel experience was as unalloyed and as transparent as a child's.

"My soul!" he ejaculated as the vehicle turned at last into the broad avenue leading to the Galbraith estate. "Ain't this a big place! Big's a hotel an' some to spare."

Even after the introductions had been performed and he had sunk into a wicker chair beside his host, with a great pillow behind him to keep him from being swallowed up and lost entirely, he abated not a whit of his gladness, admiring the flowers, the smoothly cut lawns, and the ocean view until he radiated good humor on all sides. But it was when the tea wagon was rolled out and placed before Madam Lee that his interest was not to be curbed.

"Ain't that cute now?" he commented, his eyes following the unaccustomed sight with alertness. "The feller that got a-holt of that idee found a good one. Trundles along like a little baby carriage, don't it?"

Nothing would satisfy him until he had examined every part of the invention, and Celestina trembled lest then and there his brain be stimulated to action and he make a bolt for home to complete without delay some sudden scheme the novelty had engendered. However, no such calamity occurred. He drank his tea with satisfaction and was presently borne off by Mr. Galbraith to inspect a recently purchased barometer. After he had gone the company broke up into little groups. Mrs. Galbraith and Celestina betook themselves to a shaded corner, there to exchange felicitations on Miss Morton's nephew; Roger, Cynthia, and Bob perched on the broad piazza rail and discussed the recent boat race; and Madam Lee was left alone with Delight. Robert Morton looked in vain for Mr. Snelling but he was nowhere to be seen, and presently he learned that that gentleman had taken one of the cars and gone for an afternoon's spin to Sawyer's Falls. Whether his absence was a contributory cause or not, certain it was that for the time being at least Cynthia lapsed into her customary friendly manner and quite outdid herself in graciousness.