At the end of the second season, a reaction set in. The public was clamorous for a new work from him; he was tired of being lionized by people who called his beloved overture pretty. The madness of the spring was upon him, the spirit of work had seized him, and the middle of May found him and his long-suffering piano installed in the "north chamber" of the Sykes homestead at Bannock Bars.

He had chosen the place with some degree of care, in order to be sufficiently remote from society to work undisturbed, sufficiently near civilization to be able to buy more music paper in case of need. Ten miles of even a bad road is not an impassible barrier to an enthusiastic bicyclist; yet the place was as rustic and countrified as if it had been, not ten, but ten hundred miles from an electric light. His digestion was good enough to cope even with Eulaly Sykes's perennial doughnuts, and it was in a mood of supreme content that he settled into his quarters in the wilderness. It was years since he had watched the on-coming of the New England summer; he watched it now with the trained sense, the inherent quickness of perception of the true artist who realizes that the simplest facts of the day's routine by his touch can be transmuted into glowing, vivid material for his work.

It must be confessed that Eulaly Sykes occasionally mourned to her friends over the irregularities of her boarder. His hours of work passed her comprehension, his work itself filled her soul with wonder and disgust. In his moments of inspiration when he was evoking the stormy chords of the introduction to his symphonic poem, Bisesa he never dreamed that his landlady was craning her head up from her pillows in a vain effort to discover the tune, or to reduce it to the known terms of short metre rhythm. His broken, irregular measures troubled her, as did also his broken, irregular hours of work. There were days when he rode far afield, or was seen lying on his back under the pines by the brookside, listening to the splash of the water, the hissing of the air through the boughs above him. After such days, his piano was wont to sound far into the night, and Eulaly, as she slept and waked and still heard her boarder's fingers crashing over the keys, reproached herself bitterly.

"Them last doughnuts was too rich," she used to say to her old-fashioned bolster, set up like a grim idol by the bedside; "and the poor feller can't sleep. I mustn't put so much shortenin' in the next ones. My, but that was an awful scrooch! I wish he'd shut his windows a little mite tighter, and not pester the whole neighborhood."

This state of things had endured for two weeks, and the symphonic poem was progressing as well as its composer had any reason to expect. Already it was bidding fair to rival the Alan Overture and Mr. Barrett began to carry his nose tilted at an angle higher than ever, as if in imagination he already scented the fresh laurels in store for him. Pride goeth before destruction. A long day under the pines resulted not in inspiration, but in an uninspiring cold in his head; his temper suffered together with his nose, and Eulaly Sykes, below stairs, chafed her hands together at the sounds of musical and moral discord which floated down upon her ears. All the morning long, he smote his brows and his piano by turns. The new motif he was seeking, refused to be found.

Later, fortified by Eulaly's fried chicken and rhubarb pie, he tried it again, invitingly playing over the preceding motif in every possible key and tempo. It was of no use. He slammed down the top of his piano, tore across a half-finished page, caught up his cap, mounted his bicycle and rushed away up the road, quite regardless of the clouds lying low in the western sky.

Fifteen miles of scorching over country roads sufficed to bring him to a calmer mood, and he turned his wheel towards the Sykes homestead once more. The motif was still as far beyond his grasp as ever; but there were other things in life besides elusive motifs. The increasing blackness above his head was one of them; his hunger was another, and he quickened his pace. His piano might be awaiting him in mute reproach; but then, so did Eulaly's doughnuts await him, and there was no reproach in those, at least, not until some time later. He fell to whistling a strain of his overture, as he rode swiftly along, quite unconscious of the fact that disaster, in the person of Miss Phebe McAlister, was riding quite as swiftly to meet him.

Three miles from his boarding-place, the storm overtook him with a rush which straight-way reduced the roads to the consistency of cream. He looked about for shelter; but no shelter was at hand, and the road meandered along before him uphill and down again with an easy nonchalance which appeared to take no account of the pelting rain. It was hard riding and dangerous, but he pushed on manfully, while the streams of water trickled down his neck and along the bridge of his nose. As he reached the crest of the hill, he saw before him, just crawling over the crest of the opposite hill, a figure on a bicycle coming swiftly towards him. Even at that distance, he could make out a bedraggled white suit, a limp sailor hat and a vast pulpy bundle lashed to the handle-bars.

"Some country maiden, coming home from market," he said to himself. "I Hope she is enjoying the shower."

Then of a sudden, he braced himself for a shock, for a bell was clanging wildly, and a cry rang out upon his ears,—

"Oh, go away! Be careful! Get out of the way! Quick!"

He turned aside, out of the path of the flying wheel. It sounds a cowardly thing to have done, and doubtless the knights of old would have contrived a way of rescue. To the latter-day knight, however, there was something inevitable in the on-coming of the wheel, with its rider's feet kicking in a futile search for the pedals. It reminded him of his own futile search for his motif. Both searchers seemed equally helpless to attain their objects. Moreover, when a tall and muscular maiden sweeps down upon one, leaving behind her a train of shrieks and scattered phalanges, there is absolutely nothing for one to do but to get out of her way as expeditiously as possible. No use in breaking two necks, and—the critics were waiting for the symphonic poem.

He turned, then, to the right-hand edge of the road. Phebe was bouncing along over the stones dangerously near the other gutter, and he already was congratulating himself upon his escape. Then in a moment the situation was changed. The runaway wheel flashed into a mud puddle, veered and before his astonished eyes shed a rib or two and a clavicle from the swaying bundle, veered again and collided with his own wheel. In another instant, the right-hand gutter held two muddy bicycles, the greater portion of a human skeleton, Phebe McAlister and the composer of the Alan Breck Overture.

An experienced bicycle teacher once said that no woman ever picked herself up from a fall, without saying that she was not at all hurt. True to tradition, Phebe staggered to her feet, exclaiming,—

"Thank you; but I'm not hurt in the least. I'm so sorry—"

Then she paused abruptly and stared at the stranger in the gutter. He lay as he had fallen, his face half buried in the mud and his right arm twisted under him. More frightened than she had been in all her headlong descent of the hill, she bent over him and tried to turn him as he lay. Gifford Barrett was an athlete as well as a musician, however, and it took all of Phebe's strength to stir him ever so slightly. As she did so, she disclosed a gash where his temple had struck upon a stone, and his right arm swung loosely out from his side. Phebe McAlister had suddenly found herself in the presence of her first case, and the presence was rather an appalling one.

In any crisis, the mind attacks a side issue. Phebe rose from her knees, took off the sodden thing which had been her hat, and carefully covered it over her saddle. Her face, underneath the streaks of mud, was very white, and her lips were unsteady. Then she pressed her hands over her eyes, bit her lips and gave her shoulders a little shake. That done, she knelt down in the mud once more and set herself to the task in hand, wondering meanwhile who and what her victim might be.

Obviously he was a gentleman. His firm, clean-cut lips alone would have settled that point to her satisfaction. Beyond that, she had no possible clue to his identity. The situation was a trying one. The nearest house was a mile away; the rain was still pelting heavily down upon them, and she, Phebe McAlister, was alone in the storm with a perfect stranger whom she had knocked from his bicycle, stunned and perhaps injured for life. To whom did he belong? What should she do with him? If he died, who would be responsible, not for the injury, but for making the funeral arrangements? For a moment, the unaccustomed tears rushed to her eyes, and, seen through their mist, her victim seemed to be expanding until he filled the whole landscape and surrounded her by dozens, all plastered with mud and begirt with whitened bones. Then she pulled herself together again. The stranger's arm was broken, his forehead bloody. She must see what she could do for him, then go for help.

There was a long interval when the noise of the rain was interrupted by little groans and exclamations from Phebe, while she tugged and shoved and pried at the man in the road. He was so very big, so very unconscious, so very determined to lie with his face buried in the mud and meet his end by suffocation. At last, she drew a long breath, mustered all her strength and gave him one pull which turned him completely over on his back. As she did so, his eyes opened dully and by degrees gathered expression. He looked up into her mud-stained face, down at his mud-stained clothes, around at the mud-stained skull which lay close to his side and grinned back at him encouragingly.

"What the deuce—" he faltered. Then once more he fainted away.

Twenty minutes later, Phebe was rushing away to the nearest house in search of help. There was but one house within reach, however, and fate willed that she should find that deserted. She hesitated whether she should ride on for two miles farther, or go back to her victim, and she decided upon the latter course. It seemed hours to her before she reached the top of the hill again. Then she stopped short, dismounted and stared down the slope in astonishment. Her victim had vanished from the scene. Only the skull remained to mark the spot where he had lain, two deep tracks in the soft mud to show the way by which he had gone.

"Well, Babe?" Allyn's voice hailed her, as she rode wearily up the drive, the water squelching in her shoes and her soaked skirt flapping dismally about her pedals. "Were you out in all that shower?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you go under cover?"

"There wasn't any cover to go under." Phebe's tone was not altogether amicable.

"But the mud? It's all over your face, and your wheel, and your hair."

"I fell off."

"Where?"

"Coming down Bannock Hill. I lost my pedals, and my wheel slipped in the mud."

"Bannock Hill? That's a bad place to fall. Break anything?"

"You can look and see."

But Allyn was not to be suppressed.

"Where's your hat?"

She started slightly and raised her hand to her head. It was bare.

"Oh, yes," she said unguardedly. "I remember now. I must have left it where I sat."

"Sat!" Allyn stared at his sister in amazement. "What did you do? Sit down to study the landscape?"

But Phebe stalked up the steps and into the house, and Allyn saw her no more until dinner-time.

Two days later, Allyn burst into the office where Phebe was bending over a book. In his hand was an unfolded newspaper which he flapped excitedly, as she looked up.

"There are others, Babe."

"What do you mean?"

"This. Listen! Oh, where is the thing? Here it is, in the Bannock correspondence of the Times. Listen! 'Mr. G. Bartlett, the musician who is sojourning at Mr. Jas. Sykes's farm, sustained a bad fall from his bicycle on Bannock Hill, last Tuesday. His injuries are serious, including a cut on his temple and a compound fracture of the right arm. Dr. Starr reduced the fracture and reports the patient as doing as well as—' you see somebody else slipped up on that hill, Babe. You ought to feel you came out of it pretty well."

Phebe looked up with a frown.

"Go away, Allyn; I'm busy," she said sharply.

Three weeks later, Phebe had occasion to make another trip to see Mrs. Richardson. This time, she chose the hill road, the one which led past the Sykes farm. Gifford Barrett was sauntering along by the roadside, smoking. His arm was in a sling, his hat drawn forward, half concealing the patch of plaster on his temple. As she passed, Phebe looked him full in the face, and instinctively his hand went to his cap, though without any sign of recognition.

"Some girl that's heard the overture," he said to himself. "I don't seem to remember her, though. She has a good figure and she rides well; but what a color! She will have apoplexy, some day, if she's not careful."

The next day, Eulaly Sykes's boarder had started for the Maine coast where three unmusical, but sympathetic maidens were waiting to help him pass the dreary days of his convalescence.



CHAPTER NINE

Two willow chairs were swaying to and fro in the gathering dusk, and two voices were blended in a low murmur. Theodora and Billy were exchanging the confidences born of a long week of separation while business had called Mr. Farrington to New York.

"How comes on the book, Ted?"

She shook her head.

"It doesn't come."

"Does Cicely's being here disturb you?"

"No, not really; not nearly so much as Melchisedek. In an unguarded moment, I asked him, one day, to come and help auntie write books. Since then he rushes from his breakfast straight to my room and capers madly on the threshold till I appear."

"And then?"

"Then he insists on lying in my lap and resting his head on my arm, and he snarls, every time I joggle him. It isn't helpful or inspiring, Billy."

"No; I should say not. What is the story, Ted?"

"I'm not going to tell even you, Billy," she returned quickly. "It always demoralizes me to talk over my stories while they are evolving. I must work them out alone. It seems conceited and selfish; but there's no help for it. You believe it; don't you?"

"I'll trust you, Ted. But is this hero very hectic?"

It was an old joke, but they were still laughing over it when Cicely appeared in the doorway, with Melchisedek under her arm.

"Cousin Theodora?" she said interrogatively, for the piazza was dark.

"Yes."

"I want to talk."

"You generally do, Cis," Billy observed unkindly.

"Yes; but I mean I have something to talk about. I don't always."

"Shall I go away?" he asked politely.

"No; I want a man's view of it, too. But perhaps you were busy and I'll be in the way."

For her reply, Theodora drew another chair into the group. Cicely sat down, balanced Melchisedek on her knee and fell to poking his grey hair this way and that, as if at a loss how to begin the conversation.

"How far is it safe for a girl to follow up a boy?" she asked abruptly, yet with a little catch in her breath.

"Meaning yourself?" Billy queried.

"Yes, of course."

"I should say it depended a good deal on the boy."

"I mean Allyn."

"What's the matter? Have you had a falling out?"

"Yes, we are always doing it. I can't seem to help it, either. It's horrid. He is outspoken and tells me what he thinks of me; I'm peppery, and I don't like it."

"I know, dear," Theodora said gently, for she read the girl's irritation in her voice. "Allyn isn't always as polite as he might be; but we must try not to be too sensitive."

"I'm not sensitive," Cicely said forlornly. "I like him, though, and I want him to like me, and it hurts my feelings when he doesn't."

"How long has the present feud lasted?" Billy inquired.

"Almost ten days. It's the worst one yet, and it started from nothing. I know he is your brother, Cousin Theodora; but—I really don't think it's all my fault."

"No." Theodora's voice suggested no mental reservation. "I know how it is, Cicely. Allyn has been my baby and my boy; but, much as I love him, I can't help seeing that he is cantankerous and cross-grained at times. But it is only at times, Cis; it isn't chronic."

"I wish it were. Then I shouldn't mind it so much. But when he isn't cross, he is one of the jolliest boys I have ever known. That's the worst of it, for I miss him so, when we squabble. When we are on terms, I don't care about anybody else; and so, when we are off, it leaves me all alone."

"When I squabbled with your Cousin Theodora," Billy said oracularly; "I generally felt I had done my share, and I left her to do the making up."

"So I observed," his wife answered; but Cicely was too much absorbed in her subject to heed the parenthesis.

"I'm willing to make up," she said, as she twisted Melchisedek's ears with an absent-minded fervor which caused the sufferer to whimper; "but how can I? He just goes off his way, and leaves me to go mine. I hate to tag him; besides, I don't know but he really wants to get rid of me. Hush, Melchisedek! Don't whine. I didn't intend to hurt you. That's what I meant, Cousin Ted, when I asked you about following him up. How far is it safe to go?"

"Till you get there," Mr. Farrington replied.

"Billy!" his wife remonstrated.

"All right, Ted; but I'm not altogether joking. I know boys better than you do. It's not easy for them to come down off their dignity; and, nine times out of ten, when they scowl the most darkly, they are really wishing that they knew how to come to terms. I must go down town now, Cis; but my parting advice to you is to corner Allyn and bully him into shaking hands. The boy is an ungracious cub; but he is sound at the core, and I honestly think he is fond of you in his dumb way."

After he had left them alone, Cicely dropped down on the floor at Theodora's feet.

"Life isn't a straight line; it's horribly squirmy," she said, and her voice vas unusually grave.

Theodora drew the brown head against her knee.

"What is it, dear?" she asked.

"It's only Allyn. I don't know what the reason is that we can't get on. I've known lots of boys, and I never squabbled with any of them before. And I don't know why I care so much. Sometimes I really think I am good for Allyn and can help him out, and I am disappointed because he won't let me; but I more than half think it is only my vanity, after all."

"Was it a bad fight?"

"Awful." In spite of herself, Cicely laughed at the recollection. "He wound up by telling me that I was no lady, and he didn't care to have anything more to do with me. Since then I have hardly had a glimpse of him."

"I hadn't noticed that anything was wrong between you," Theodora said thoughtfully.

"No; we both of us are old enough not to quarrel in public. But I can't see any end to this. I care for Allyn a great deal, and I miss him; but if he does not want me for a friend, I can't force him to take me. I'm not a pill, to be swallowed whether or no."

"Perhaps I could help a little."

Cicely shook her head.

"No; we were the ones to fight, and now we must be the ones to make up, without any go-betweens. Papa has always told me that dignity doesn't count in a case like this; and I'm willing to do anything reasonable. The only trouble is that I don't know what Allyn really wants. If he truly does wish I would let him alone, I don't see any use in my hanging on to him. Just once, more than a month ago, he said something that made me think he cared, and was glad to have me here; but it was only once, and maybe I was mistaken. It isn't forever since you were a girl, Cousin Theodora. What did you do in such cases?"

Theodora rapidly reviewed her past.

"I think I never had just such a case, Cicely," she said honestly. "Hu and Billy were my two best friends; and I don't think either one of them ever had a cross-grained day in his life. I was generally the aggressor, myself."

Cicely rubbed her head against Theodora's knee in mute contradiction.

"But what should you do in my case?" she persisted.

"I don't know. Sometimes I can't tell what to do in my own. Allyn is rather a puzzle."

"He's worse than an original proposition in geometry. I want to solve him and I can't. Papa has always taught me that we girls have a good deal of responsibility, and that we can help our boy friends a good deal, or else hinder them. Perhaps I am conceited; but it seems to me as if I could help Allyn, if I could get at him. Besides—" she hesitated.

"Well?" Theodora said encouragingly.

"Oh, it's silly to tell; but sometimes I wonder whether it wouldn't help you a little, at the same time. I'd love to feel it did; you have been so good to me. I know you worry about Allyn. You watch him as a cat watches a mouse, and you always seem to understand his queer ways and know just how to manage him. I wish I could do it as you do."

Theodora was silent for a moment. Then she bent down and laid her cheek against the brown chair.

"Cicely," she said; "those eyes of yours have a trick of seeing deeper into things than you suspect. We have gone so far that we may as well go a little farther. Allyn is very dear to me; but I do worry about him more than I like to tell. He is headstrong and obstinate; worse than that; he is moody, and there is his great danger. Under it all, he is a splendid fellow; but I am afraid he will turn sour and hard. It grew on him fast, last year, while I was away, and the next two or three years will settle the matter, one way or the other. Ever so much is going to depend on keeping him happy and jolly. He hasn't many friends left, and he needs all those he has, needs to trust them and feel they trust him and care a great deal for him, whatever he says or does. If you want to, you can help me in this."

There was a short silence. Then Theodora went on,—

"Every girl has the making of at least one boy, if she manages him in the right way. I agree with your father in that, Cis, agree with him with all my heart. She must forget, though, that they are boy and girl, and only remember that they are comrades. Flirting never helps things. But a girl has more patience than a boy, as a rule, and more tact. Where a boy fights, she waits till the time comes for her to put in a word that tells. Moreover, she is willing to stand by her friends through thick and thin, if she has any conscience at all, and most boys go through an age when every such loyal friend counts in holding them steady. A girl that neither preaches nor flirts, can sometimes carry a boy through hours when his own mother would be helpless to manage him. It's a great gift in the hands of you girls, Cis; and it shouldn't make you careless or conceited, but very conscientious in the way you use it."

"I think I understand why Cousin Will looks at you just as he does sometimes," the girl said slowly. "But about Allyn?"

"You can do whatever you choose with him," Theodora answered quickly. "Allyn is very fond of you, Cis. I know him better than you do, and I know that he cares a good deal more for you than you suspect, even if he does take queer ways of showing it. You have it in your hands to help him over one of the worst spots in his life."

"How?"

"By making up with him and, if he fights again, making up again. Keep friends with him, keep him bright and interested and healthy. I don't mind his being cross half so much as I do his going off by himself and looking glum. If you are willing, Cicely, you can do more to break that up than I can."

The girl shook her head.

"I can help; but you stand first, Cousin Ted."

"Not in this. I'm related to him, and I am a great deal older than he is. Those are two serious handicaps, sometimes. He will come to me always probably in emergencies; at least, I hope he will, but it is the steady companionship that counts for more than this, the chance to lessen the friction in all manner of little things. There I am helpless. Allyn knows that I have my house and my writing and my husband to look out for, and he would be on his guard directly, if he saw me turn my back on them and give my time to him. But, Cicely, this is asking a great deal of you."

"Not so much as it sounds," the girl said earnestly. "I'm not all a child, Cousin Ted; and I have watched Allyn a good deal. It hasn't seemed to me that things went right with him; but there was nothing I could put my finger on, nothing at all. I like him, and I like to do things with him, even if he is younger; but I don't want you to think I am horrid and forward with him, when he doesn't want me."

She was silent for a moment, while Melchisedek licked her face, unrebuked. Then she rose, pushing the dog gently away.

"Is this what you mean, Cousin Theodora: that it will be a good idea, for me to do things with Allyn, to care for the things he likes, and, if he gets cross and goes off not to care, but just go after him and bring him back again?"

"If you feel as if you could, Cicely."

"I do; I'd be glad to. Sometimes I wonder if any one else were ever half so good fun; sometimes I wonder how such a grumpy thing can be a McAlister," she said, with thoughtful frankness. "It's the grumpy side that must be kept under, I suppose; but he isn't real sweet to handle under such circumstances."

"I know that," Theodora answered, as she rose and stooped to pick up Melchisedek who was pulling at her skirts appealingly. "But it's only the chance of helping him forget to be grumpy, till he outgrows the habit. It isn't that I want to spoil him, Cicely. It wouldn't do any good to coddle him or give in to him. Just keep out of all the skirmishes you can; and when he forces you into one, do what you can to establish a truce. Most boys go through this thorny age; it's as inevitable as mumps, but Allyn is taking it very hard, and we want to break it up before it becomes chronic. Do you see what I am driving at, dear?"

"Enough so that I am going to wave the olive branch, to-morrow," she answered, laughing. "If he ignores it, I'll try it again in some other form. I only wanted to make sure that you approved of my meddling." She put her hand through Theodora's arm and together they paced up and down the broad piazza. Above them, the stars were dotting the still, dark air, and the ragged outline of The Savins showed itself faintly through the great trees. "His eyes have looked so heavy, the last day or two," she added, as she looked across to the light shining out from Allyn's window. And again, after a long interval, "It's not so easy, after all, Cousin Ted, this being a girl."



CHAPTER TEN

"Teddy, I am worried about Allyn."

"What is the matter? Isn't he well?"

"Yes, only rather listless. It isn't his health I am worrying about; it is his character."

"He will come out all right," Theodora said cheerily, for it was rare to see her father in a despondent mood, and the sight distressed her.

"Perhaps; but it seems to me that something is wrong with the boy. He isn't like the rest of you."

"Mercifully not; and yet we were all queer sticks," Theodora observed tranquilly. "We appear to be working out our own salvation, though, whether it's writing or bones, and Allyn will probably follow our example when he is old enough."

"I wish he might. He is giving me more trouble than all the rest of you put together, and the worst of it is that I don't know whether he needs a tonic or a thrashing." The good doctor knitted his brows and endeavored to look stern. "I suspect it is the latter," he added.

Theodora shook her head gayly.

"It wouldn't be of any use, papa. We must bide our time. Allyn is queer, most mortal queer; but these may be the mutterings of genius, a volcanic genius that is getting ready to erupt."

"I never regarded bad temper as a sign of genius."

"Perhaps not. But, even if it isn't, thrashings only leave callous spots. You'd better try the tonic."

They had been walking up and down the front lawn. Now they turned, as by common consent, and strolled away towards a more distant part of the grounds.

"Is anything new the trouble?" Theodora asked, after an interval.

"No; only that his school reports get worse and worse, and that he appears to have a perfect genius for losing friends."

"Even the warty James?"

The doctor laughed.

"I can't blame him for half his antipathies," he said; "and that makes it hard for me to corner him in an argument. The boy was born with a hatred of dirt and of lying and of toadying, and he is utterly intolerant of anybody who shows anything of the three. His theories are all right, only his way of carrying them out makes him rather unpopular. But what is worrying me now is his school work. He isn't stupid; but his marks are away below par."

"You might try the tonic," Theodora said. "But what about Babe?"

"Don't ask me, Ted. That girl defies prediction. She always did. One day, I think she will bring glory to us all; the next, I want to turn her out of my office. She is as smart as a steel trap; but she is as lawless as Allyn. It's in a different way. I blame them both; but I am sorry for him, while I want to shake Phebe. She could do anything she chose, but she never really chooses. Sometimes I think she is only playing with her study. The next day, she astonishes me by some brilliant stroke that makes me forgive all her past laziness. She's splendid stuff, Ted, only she needs a balance-wheel. The fact is, the girl is selfish. She isn't working for love of her profession and the good it can do to others; all she cares for is the pleasure she takes in it, the pride that it brings her. That may do in some lines; but a doctor must think beyond that and outside of himself and his own interests."

"That's true of most of us," Theodora said; "at least, that is what we are aiming at."

"Some of us; not all. Teddy, you are a comfort to your old father."

"Even if I did help to turn his hair grey?"

He shook his head.

"You used to rush headlong into things, Ted; but you never went very far astray, and now—"

Theodora seized his arm.

"Hush!" she said, pointing to the shady spot under the trees where Allyn lay on the grass with Cicely by his side. The girl was bareheaded, and one shaft of sunlight, slanting down between the oak leaves above her, struck across her brown hair and across her hand as it lay on Allyn's outstretched palm.

"Come, papa, let's leave them there," she added. "Cicely is a better doctor for Allyn than either you or I."

It was the third day after her talk with Theodora, and Cicely had not so much as caught a glimpse of Allyn, though she had dropped in at The Savins repeatedly, on the chance of finding him at home. Whether the boy had turned his back upon the world, or was merely trying to keep out of her way, she was at a loss to determine. However, she saw no use in taking the whole family into her confidence, and she apparently gave her entire attention to Mrs. McAlister and Phebe, while in reality her grey eyes were keeping a sharp lookout for the missing boy.

At last she made up her mind that indirect methods were useless. Siege failing, she determined to carry the place by assault.

"Where is Allyn?" she demanded, as she came up the steps of The Savins with Melchisedek at her heels.

"I don't know. Get away! Shoo! Cicely, do call your horrid dog away." And Phebe brandished a scalpel threateningly.

"Here, Melchisedek, come here!"

But Melchisedek, his paws planted on the hem of Phebe's skirt, was barking madly and making little lunges at something in her lap.

"Get out! Ugh! Do go away! Cicely, call him!"

Cicely stooped and caught up the wriggling little creature who protested loudly, as she tucked him under her arm.

"Might I inquire what that choice morsel is, Phebe?" she asked disdainfully.

"It's a chicken's gizzard," Phebe answered shortly.

"Oh, and you were having a private lunch out here. Beg pardon for disturbing you." Cicely's eyes were dancing, and the dimples in her cheeks were at their deepest; but Phebe never looked up. "Poor little Melchisedek!" the girl went on. "Wouldn't his old Aunt Babe give him one little bittie piece? Well, it was too bad. Do you lunch out here from choice, Babe; or were you sent away from the table?"

"Don't be silly, Cicely. Can't you see I am studying it?"

"What for?"

"To see how it's made."

"Oh, then it's science, not hunger. It's all right, Melchisedek; she is learning things, not eating them. But what was it you said about Allyn?"

"Nothing."

"Please do say something, then. I want him."

"Ask mother," Phebe said absently. "Oh-h, there now!"

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, only it's tough. Do go on."

"Gizzards generally are. If I can do you any little good turn in the way of table scraps, Babe, don't hesitate to mention it." And Cicely departed in search of Mrs. McAlister.

"No," she said; "I mustn't stay. I only want Allyn."

"I saw him go across the hill, just after lunch. He had a book with him, and you may find him reading, somewhere over there. Don't hurry."

"Thank you; I must go." And she went away across the lawn.

She found Allyn quite at the farther side of the grounds, lying in the tall June grass with his arms folded under his head. Face down beside him was a book; but his thoughts were elsewhere and quite apart from the great tree above him into which he was staring so fixedly. Instinctively he had chosen the most beautiful spot in the grounds where the land sloped away to the west, across a salt marsh all bright with greeny brown grasses, and onward into the open country beyond. At the north, a faint line of white smoke marked the path of a passing train; at the south could be seen a small blue patch of ocean.

In the thick grass, Cicely's steps were noiseless, and Melchisedek considerately neglected to bark, so Allyn was unconscious of her approach. He started suddenly, as she dropped down at his side.

"What do you want?" he asked gruffly.

"You."

"I'm busy."

"You look it," she said merrily, as she pointed to the book against which Melchisedek had promptly braced his back while he searched for a missing burr that he had accumulated in the course of his rambles.

"I wish you'd go away," he grumbled.

"I'm not doing any harm," she said composedly. "You don't own this place, anyway."

"My father does, then."

"He won't turn me out."

"Wish he would and done with it." Allyn rolled over on his side with his back inhospitably turned to his caller.

Her dimples came ever so little. Then she said quietly,

"What a dear, courteous soul you are, Allyn! Please do listen to me, for I've come to tell you something."

"Tell away, if you want to." He pushed aside Melchisedek who had stolen up behind him and pounced down upon his ear.

"I want to make peace."

"Make it."

"But if it takes two to make a quarrel, it probably takes two to make a peace. Allyn, I am tired of fighting. Let's make up."

"What's the use? We should only fight again."

"Perhaps; but sufficient unto the day—We might try it and see."

He made no answer. Instead, he dislodged Melchisedek from a seat on his neck, and reached out for the neglected book. Cicely anticipated him and grasped it first. Quickly she dropped her coaxing tone and became curt and matter-of-fact.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Dutch."

"Not reading it for fun?"

"Not if I know myself. It's grammar."

"Isn't it hard, though?"

"Beastly. I can't get it into my head. Don't believe anybody can." And Allyn sat up and vented his spite against the language by hurling a stone against a distant birch tree.

"What are you studying it for now?" Cicely demanded, as Melchisedek scurried, yelping rapturously, in search of the flying stone.

"Got to, or else be conditioned."

"I don't believe it is as bad as that."

"Yes, 'tis. I barely scraped through, last Christmas, and papa told me then that, if I failed now, I couldn't go to Quantuck, but must stay here alone with him and work all summer."

"And so you are trying to be on the safe side?"

"Not any safe side about it. I was warned, a week ago."

"How horrid!" Cicely said sympathetically. "It won't be any fun at Quantuck without you. I was counting on having you to explore things with, you know. I've never been there."

"You'll have to take it out in counting, then."

"I don't see why. You're only warned, and it's two weeks before examination."

"Yes; but I can't get the blamed stuff into me."

"Perhaps I could help you," she suggested.

"You!" Allyn's tone was not altogether complimentary, and Cicely was uncertain whether she wanted to laugh or to box his ears. "Do you know any German?"

"Papa and I used to talk it a good deal," she said demurely; "and I know something about the grammar."

"Why, I didn't know it. I didn't suppose you knew anything but music." In his honest boyish wonder, Allyn's voice regained something of its old friendliness.

"Yes, I was almost ready for college; but, when I came up here, papa said I'd better take a vacation and only keep up my music," she answered, in an off-hand way which gave Allyn no hint that he was talking to the show pupil of Professor Almeron's school. "It was great fun at first; but now I am honestly sick of having so much vacation and I'd love to take up my German again if I only had somebody to do it with."

"Do you like to study?"

"N—no; but I don't mind it. I like to practise better."

"I hate it all. I wish I weren't going to college."

"What do you for, then?"

"Oh, I'm expected to. They all take it for granted. Ted did, and Hubert and Billy. I hate languages, though. I'd like to cut the whole thing."

"What do you like?"

"Drawing."

Cicely clasped her hands in sudden envy.

"Oh, I do love pictures! Can you draw? I never saw any."

"I never drew a picture in my life." Allyn's tone was disdainful.

"What do you draw then?"

"Machinery, of course. Wheels and pulleys and things. It's such fun to fit them together, Cis, and see how you can get the power across from one to the other."

Her eyes flashed at the use of her nickname once more. She felt that the feud was forgotten, as she asked, with an interest which was not all feigned,—

"Have you any of them?"

"Not here; but lots of them in my room. I do them, evenings and all sorts of off times, and some of them aren't so simple as they look, either."

"Has anybody seen them?"

He shook his head.

"What's the use? Phebe's bones are bad enough. The house wouldn't hold two cranks. Nobody else knows."

"I want to see them," she asserted.

"They aren't anything to see. Besides, you couldn't understand them."

"I'm not so sure of that. At least, you might try me."

"Anyhow, I like them lots better than I do this stuff." He thumped the German grammar viciously.

"Why don't you do them then?"

"No good."

"I mean instead of college."

"Papa wouldn't let me."

"Have you ever asked him?"

"What's the use? He wants me to be a doctor."

"Do you want to?"

"No. Babe is enough to make me sick of doctors," he answered with brotherly frankness.

"I like doctors, myself; but I'd rather be a good machinist than a bad doctor."

"So would I, a plaguy sight," he muttered; "but the others wouldn't stand it."

"I can't see why," Cicely said thoughtfully. "It is smutty work, and it doesn't sound exactly aristocratic; but soap is cheap, and you aren't obliged to eat out of a tin pail. Allyn, I'd do it if I were in your place."

He turned to face her, and his brown eyes were lighted with his enthusiasm.

"I wish I could," he said excitedly, his words tumbling over and over each other. "Ever since I was a little bit of a fellow, I've liked such things, machinery and all that. I've felt at home with it and wanted to handle it. I hate school and the things the fellows care for, girls and dancing school and that stuff—I don't mean you, Cis; you're more like a boy,—and I hate worst of all the everlasting Greek and Latin. It is out of my line; I can't see anything in it. There's some sense in machinery. You can handle it, and mend it, and make it go, and maybe improve it. That's enough better than things you get out of books. Do you suppose there would be any chance of their letting me cut school and go into a shop?"

With a boy's eager haste, now that his secret was out, he was for dropping everything else and rushing headlong into his hobby. Cicely counselled patience.

"Wait," she said, as she rested her hand on his for an instant. "You're only fifteen, and there is plenty of time to decide. It is worth trying for, and I think perhaps you may get your way; but, first of all, you'll have to prove that it isn't just because you are too lazy to study Greek and German that you want to give it up. If you pass good examinations, this June, your chance will be all the better. Then you can go off, this summer, and take time to think it over. By fall, you can tell what you really do want; and, if your father is the man I think he is, and if you behave yourself in the meantime, I believe you will get it." She paused and, for the second time in her acquaintance with him, she felt Allyn's fingers close warmly on her own; but he only said,—

"You're not half bad for a girl, Cis."

"And when shall we begin our Dutch?" she asked, determined to clinch the fact of their treaty of peace.

"When can you?"

"To-night. Come over at eight, and I'll be ready. We'll take an hour, every evening and I'll do fudge afterward."

The dinner bell was sounding at The Savins, as Cicely and Allyn came strolling homeward. It was evident that they had been for a long walk. Melchisedek's tail drooped dejectedly, and Allyn carried a sheaf of nodding yellow lilies, while Cicely had the despised grammar tucked under one arm and a bunch of greenish white clovers in the other hand. They came on, shoulder to shoulder, talking busily, and Theodora as she watched them, was well content.

At the table, Cicely ignored the events of the afternoon

"Allyn is having a bad time with his German and I am going to see if I can help him," was all she said. "Are you going to use the library, this evening?"



CHAPTER ELEVEN

"'Lit-tle ones to him be-long, Vey are weak, but he is strong.'

"Mam-ma-a-a!" Mac's burst of psalmody ended in a roar.

"Yes, Mac. Here I am."

"Where?"

"Upstairs, packing."

Mac toiled up the stairs and into his mother's room.

"I fought maybe you wanted to see me," he observed. "What for you putting all vose fings into ve box?"

"Because we are going to see grandpapa and Aunt Teddy, and then we are all going to the seashore."

"What is ve seashore?"

"The ocean, the great, broad blue water without any edge to it, where the waves keep tumbling over and over on the beach."

"What's beach?" he demanded. Always used to the mountains, the phraseology of the sea was a new tongue to him.

"It's the edge of the water," his mother said absently, while she tried to fold an organdie gown to the best advantage.

"But you said vere wouldn't be any edge," he protested, for he was nothing if not logical, and he insisted upon logic from others.

"Well, never mind now. Run away, dear, and I'll tell you about it, some other time."

But Mac festooned himself across the open box couch.

"No; sometime isn't ever, and I wants to hear it now. I do 'clare, mamma, you've put in my best coat." And before she could stop him, he had pounced upon it and pulled it out, upsetting a superstratum of gowns in the process.

"Mac, let that be."

"But I want it, mamma. I want to wear it. I look just too sweet in it."

"Mac!"

"Well, vat's what Lizabuf said. Will Lizabuf go too?"

"No."

"Who will take care of me, and put me into my coatsleeves ven?"

"I shall."

"I'd ravver have Lizabuf. Oh, mamma, is vat your swishy dress? It's so beautiful!" This time, Mac lost his balance and plunged headlong into the trunk. For one moment, his chubby legs waved in the air; then his mother seized him and set him down in a chair at the farther side of the room.

"Now, Mac, I want you to stay there," she said with decision.

There was a brief silence. Then Mac remarked,—

"You act and look awful bangy, to-day, mamma, just as if you were going to sweep rooms right away."

Five days later, Mrs. Holden acknowledged to herself that she felt "bangy." It was her first long journey without her husband and, less independent than her sisters, she would have dreaded it in any case. Without Mr. Holden, the trip was an undertaking; with Mac, it was almost insupportable. She embarked with a lunch basket, with picture books and with theories. She landed, a chastened woman. Within twelve hours, the basket was empty, the picture books were in shreds, and Mac, bareheaded, coated with cinders and wreathed in smiles, was prancing up and down the car, heedless of her admonitions. By day, the other passengers petted him and encouraged him to all manner of pertnesses. At night, they murmured, not always among themselves, when he waked up and in stentorian tones demanded a drink. No child of three is altogether a desirable companion on a long journey, least of all McAlister Holden. Small wonder that it was a pale and haggard Hope who drove up to The Savins, one night in late June, while Mac was as vivacious as at the start!

He went through the introductions with the nonchalance of his years, though he resisted Theodora's efforts to kiss him, and sniffed disdainfully at Phebe who was trying for her sister's sake to conceal her dislike of children. By Mrs. McAlister's side, he paused and looked straight up into her face. Then he tucked his hand into hers confidingly.

"Are you my grandma?"

"Yes, dear."

"Why, you look too new," he said frankly, and then put up his rosy lips for a kiss. For the moment, the cherub side was uppermost, and his mother, as she reflected upon the permanence of first impressions, rejoiced that it was so, and she hurried the child off to bed, for fear he might do something to destroy the illusion.

"Mamma," he said sleepily, as she left him, to go down for her own dinner; "will you please tell me just vis much?"

"Well?"

"Were you a mamma when you lived here before?"

"No, Mac."

"And now you've grown out into a beautifully mamma. Good-night!" And he went to sleep with the saintly side of his character still uppermost.

The Farringtons and Cicely dined at The Savins; but, directly after dinner, Cicely excused herself and went home to do some practising.

"No; I suppose it could wait," she said to Allyn who followed her to the door; "but it must be done some time. It is ages since you were all here together, and you ought to be just by yourselves to-night."

"But you are one of the family," Allyn protested.

"That's nice of you, Allyn; but it isn't quite the same thing. Besides, if I practise now, I shall have more time for fun, to-morrow. Go back to your sister. Isn't she a dear?"

"Yes, Hope is a good one," Allyn said, though without much enthusiasm; "but Ted is worth ten of her, according to my notions." And Cicely nodded up at him in token of agreement.

By the time dinner was over, the evening had grown chilly, and the McAlisters drew up their chairs around the open fire.

"All here once more, thank God!" the doctor said contentedly, as he settled himself between Theodora and Mrs. Holden.

"This seems just like the good old times," Theodora added. "It's five years since we were all here together, like this. Doesn't it make you feel as if you had never been away, Hope?"

"Yes, almost. If Allyn weren't quite so grown up and Billy so lively, I should believe we were children again. Ted, do you remember the first night that Archie came here?"

"The night I went slumming and stole the child? I should say I did. Archie didn't take it kindly at all, when he found the infant in his bed."

"That reminds me, papa," Phebe said abruptly; "Isabel and I want to take some fresh-air children, next week."

"Why, Babe, I don't see how you can," Theodora remonstrated.

"I didn't ask you, Teddy. I have thought it all over, and I can't see any objections. I should take all the care of it, and I want to do it."

"But the house is so full, Babe," Mrs. McAlister said. "There isn't any room for one."

"It could sleep on the lounge in my room. I wouldn't let it trouble you any. It is a fine charity, and this is such a good place for a child to play. Isabel will take one for a week, if I will, and I said I would. There is just time, before I go away," Phebe said with an air of finality which would have ended the subject, had it not been for Allyn's last shot,—

"They'd better get its life insured, then, for there's no telling how long it will be before Babe takes it as a subject for her scalpel."

"Don't be foolish, Allyn," Phebe returned; but Hubert interposed,—

"Isn't Archie going to come on at all, this summer, Hope?"

"I'm afraid not. Summer is his busy time, and he will be out in camp till snow flies."

"I don't see the use of having that kind of a husband," Phebe observed severely.

"You like the kind like me better; don't you, Babe?"

"No; I should get sick of having you everlastingly around the house, Billy. I want a man to have hours and stick to them, not keep running in and out. I sha'n't marry. If I did, I would insist on a ten-hour law; then I could be sure of getting some time to myself."

"Archie lives on a ten-month law," his wife said regretfully. "Of course, I can go out to camp to be with him; but it's not good for Mac. He picks up all the talk of the miners and retails it at inopportune times, and runs wild generally. Archie usually comes home for a day, every two or three weeks; but, this year, he is too far out for that, so I thought it was best for me to come East now."

"You had an easy journey; didn't you?" Hubert asked.

"Yes; at least, as easy as it could be with Mac."

"I think you have slandered Mac," Mrs. McAlister observed. "He seems as gentle as a cooing dove."

Hope and Theodora exchanged glances, as Hubert said laughingly,—

"That's because he paid you a compliment. Your judgment isn't a fair one."

But Hope only added,—

"Wait and see what the morrow may bring forth."

The morrow brought forth Mac, rested, refreshed, ready for mischief. Before breakfast was on the table, he had had an unfriendly interview with Patrick, had come into collision with Melchisedek, and Mrs. McAlister met him hurriedly retiring from the kitchen with both hands full of fried potatoes. The next that was seen of him, he was playing horse on the front lawn, and Allyn was the horse. Even in his brief survey of the family, the night before, Mac had come to a decision upon two points. He did not like his Aunt Phebe; he did like his Uncle Allyn. And Allyn, unaccustomed to children though he was, promptly became the slave of his imperious young nephew.

"Oh, Hope, it is good to have you here," Theodora said, with a tempestuous embrace, when Mrs. Holden appeared at the door of the writing-room, that morning.

"Then I am not in the way?"

"Not a bit. I'm not writing, to-day; I can't settle myself, when I know you are within reach."

"Perhaps I'd better go back to Helena," Hope suggested.

"No; I shall calm down in time; but I never get used to having you so far away. It never seems quite right, when the rest of us are all here together."

"I am a little terrified at the prospect of the coming week," Hope said, as she sat down on the couch and looked across the lawn to where Mac was playing.

"What now?"

"Babe is to have her fresh-air child."

"Hope! You don't mean it?"

"Yes, she has coaxed papa into giving his consent. Is it a new idea to you?"

Theodora dropped her duster, and sat down beside her sister.

"It's new to us all," she said despairingly. "We never heard of it till last night. What will that girl do next? She detests children, and she has about as much idea of discipline as she has about—raising poultry. It is Isabel St. John's doing, I know. She is Babe's best-beloved friend; and where one leads, the other will follow."

"Babe seems to be in earnest about it," Hope said charitably.

"She's in earnest about everything—by fits and starts. It only doesn't last. She seems to be losing something of her medical fervor, and probably this is taking its place. I suppose she has met somebody who slums for a living, and the idea enchants her. I used to have aspirations that way, myself; but I am coming to the conclusion that for me charity begins at home, and that it counts for more to make Billy comfortable than to make his life a burden with my hobbies."

"Blunt as ever, Teddy?" Hope's laugh had no sting.

"Yes. I haven't reformed yet. Things 'rile' me, just as they used to, things and people. I'm a good hater, Hope." There was a suspicious glitter in her eyes; but it vanished, as Hope's hand touched her own.

"And a good lover, too, dear. I wasn't criticising, for I think you are in the right of it. But Babe really seems rather practical. She only wants the child for a week, and she agrees to take all the care of it and give it its meals away from the table."

"Yes; but what will she do with it?" Theodora's tone showed her perplexity. "There's no telling what may happen in the course of a week. She will test all the theories of all the cranks on the one poor baby, one theory a day, and by the end of the week, there won't be any baby left to send home again."

"My chief worry is for Mac," Hope said resignedly.

"Oh, I don't think the child will hurt him," Theodora reassured her. "They won't dare send a very bad one."

"No; but it may work the other way about. I am a good deal more worried in regard to Mac's effect on the child, and—"

"Mam-ma!"

"No, Mac. I told you that you mustn't come here. This is Aunt Teddy's house, and people don't come here, unless she invites them."

The door swung open a little way, and a chubby face appeared in the crack.

"Ven please 'vite me now, Aunt Teddy."

"You may come in, Mac."

Mac came in, wriggled his fat little body into the narrow space between his mother and his aunt, and gave a sigh of relief.

"Vere," he said gravely; "we're all fixed nice, Aunt Teddy, just ve way my mamma does when she's going to give me somefing good to eat."



CHAPTER TWELVE

"I really can't see why they should call this cottage Valhalla," Dr. McAlister said thoughtfully.

"Probably because there isn't any hall, and the dining-room is a tight fit for five of us," Phebe answered, as she took a cup from the china closet without troubling herself to leave her seat at the table.

"Teddy's establishment boasts the poetic name of Dandelion Lodge," Mrs. McAlister added. "There isn't a dandelion in sight, and, architecturally speaking, it is more like a hen-house than a lodge. Still, I suppose it is well to have a name, even if there isn't anything in it."

"No matter," Hope said contentedly; "it's good to be free from the everlasting Belviews and Wavecrests. Valhalla isn't trite; Babe and I will be the Valkyries, and we have caught one hero already." She smiled at her father, as she spoke.

"I intend to have another before I leave here," Phebe proclaimed, as she passed her plate for more fish. "One hero isn't enough for us; we need one apiece."

"Where will you get him, sister Valkyrie?"

"I don't know; out of the briny deep perhaps, but time will show."

"'Or old Valhalla's roaring hail, Her ever-circling mead and ale,'"

the doctor sang, and Phebe joined his song,—

"'Where for eternity unite The joys of wassail ad the fight,'"

for the stirring ballad was a favorite with them both.

Mac levelled his fork at them accusingly.

"You mustn't sing at ve table. It's horrid to sing at ve table."

"I beg your pardon, Mac," said his grandfather meekly.

Outside their windows, the sun was glowing over the steel blue sea. Not a sail broke the distance; only the ceaseless tossing of white foam above the rips, and close at hand a dory or two, rocking and rolling just outside the line of surf. In the foreground was a broad strip of sand and silvery beach grass then a narrower strip of sand without any grass at all, and then the huge breakers which came crashing in, wave on wave, mounting up, curling over, falling, breaking and racing up the sharp slope of sand, with never a halt for rest. Beyond that, the sea; beyond that again, three thousand miles beyond, Spain.

Qantuck lies crescent-wise along its low sandy cliff. The arms of the crescent are made up of new houses of more normal shape and size; but between them, the primeval village huddles itself together around the old town pump. No seaside villas are there, but the tiny low cottages of the old fishing hamlet, which seem to have grown like an amoeba, by the simple process of putting out arms in any direction that chance may dictate. Between them, the rutted, grass-grown roads are so narrow that traffic is seriously congested by the meeting of a box cart and a certain stout old dachshund that frequents the streets, and the cottages present their fronts or sides or rears to the roads, according to the whim of the owner. Crowded under the cliff are the bits of fishhouses, built, like the cottages above, all of shingles all gray with the passing years, for Quantuck history stretches back far into the long-ago, when, Town seven miles away, was a prosperous whaling port. But though the summer visitors come in schools like the bluefish, the little gray village on the cliff is unchanging and unchanged.

In the very heart of the old settlement, poised on the verge of the cliff, Valhalla and Dandelion Lodge were side by side, and the middle of July found Dr. McAlister in one, in the other the Farringtons with Hubert and Allyn as their guests.

"Valhalla can't hold you all," Billy had said, when they were making their plans for the summer. "If we take the Lodge, there will be an extra room, and Allyn and Hubert may as well use it. It really won't make any difference how we divide up. At Quantuck the houses only count on foggy days."

In fact, it had been Billy's idea, their choosing Quantuck, that summer. Years before, in his young boyhood, the Farringtons had been there, season after season, and he had always wanted to get back to the old place. Again and again he had been prevented, and it was not until this summer that he had succeeded in carrying out his plans. Now, for the first time in years, Dr. McAlister had consented to take a long vacation; Theodora's novel was locked up in the safe at home, waiting for revision; Hubert was to be with them for three weeks of the time, and Hope had come on from Helena to make the family circle complete.

To no one of the family had the week before the flitting been absolutely enjoyable. On one scorching July morning, Phebe and Phebe's own familiar friend, Isabel St. John, had roused their respective households at four o'clock in order that they might catch the six-thirty train for New York. Once there, they betook themselves to Hester Street in order to study the conditions of life in the East Side. It chanced, however, to be Friday, market day, and the place was a veritable Babel with the cries of the hucksters and the shrill clamor of the women elbowing each other about the push-carts. No one paid any heed to the girls; and on their side, after a brief inspection they paid heed to but one question, how to get out of the region as speedily as possible. Accordingly, they went up town to lunch, strolled about Twenty-third Street for an hour or two before going to the office of the fresh-air charity, and, late that evening, reappeared at their own front doors, each with a wan and weary child at her heels. Isabel's was a boy; Phebe, in deference to the conditions of a family treaty, had a girl.

For about three weeks, Phebe's table had been heaped with books on child-study, on pedagogy, on domestic hygiene; her room had been littered with syllabi on child impressions in every conceivable relation. Phebe was resolved to be scientific, or die in the attempt. She came nearer achieving the latter alternative. The struggle began on the first morning of her new charge. She was up early and ran down to the kitchen to put the oatmeal over the fire. Then full of courage and sociological zeal, she approached the tub, a thermometer in one hand, the child in the other. The fray which followed, was a short one. It began with Phebe's dropping the thermometer on the floor and plumping the child bodily into the bath. It ended with the child's breaking away and diving into bed again, dripping with bath-water and tears, while Phebe picked up the scattered fragments of the thermometer and fished the towels from the tub where they floated limply.

During the next half hour, Phebe parted with most of her theories and all of her temper. In the first place, she had never before tried to dress a child, and this first experience was not a pleasing one. The child's toes persisted in catching in the tops of the stockings, the little waist seemed to her unaccustomed eyes to be constructed upside down, and the scant little skirt went on hind side before. In spite of shrill protestations, she braided up the lanky hair and scoured a patch of skin in the very middle of the child's face, and at last the toilet was complete. Breakfast brought with it a new chapter in her experiences. No arguments could induce the child to touch the oatmeal, unless it were combined with equal parts of sugar, and Phebe meekly yielded to the inevitable, while she hung up the dripping sheets to dry. Then she locked the child into her room, and went wearily down to join the others at the breakfast-table.

Later, when she appeared on the lawn, leading her charge by the hand, Mac came forward to meet them. With his pudgy hands clasped behind him and his small legs wide apart, he halted in front of the girl and, bending forward, peered up under her sunbonnet.

"Shake hands, baby," he said encouragingly.

The child obediently put out one small fist; but unluckily Phebe had spent all her energies on the face and neglected the hands entirely. Mac looked at the grimy fingers, recalled the talk at the breakfast-table and put his own hands behind him once more.

"Nahsty little girl!" he said severely, and, turning on his heel, departed in search of Allyn.

For the next seven days, Phebe passed through every variety of toil and woe and anxiety, also, it must be confessed, of teasing from her family. According to its lights, the child was good. It was not bright enough to be mischievous; it was pitifully apathetic on most points. In four directions, however, it held pronounced opinions, and, moreover, it had the courage of its convictions. It refused to be left alone for more than five minutes at a time; it refused to be washed; it refused to eat plain food, and it persisted, in spite of all opposition, in calling Phebe grandma. The title suggested affectionate devotion; but Phebe would have given up the devotion with perfect readiness.

It had been decreed that, if Phebe took the child, she should assume the whole responsibility in the matter, and she was resolute in carrying out her share of the compact. Theodora washed her hands of the affair entirely and only viewed it as an immense joke; but Hope, motherly and tender-hearted woman that she was, tried her best to come to the aid of her young sister. It was in vain. The little girl, homesick and forlorn for her wonted ways and plays, appeared to regard Phebe as the sole connecting link between the present gilded captivity and her old-time freedom. She wailed loudly at the approach of any one else, and was only content when her temporary guardian was within sight and touch. For seven weary days, the child was Phebe's inseparable companion and adjunct. On the evening of the eighth day, Phebe came home from New York, burned her syllabi and carried seven bulky tomes back to the public library.

"Retail reform isn't of the least use," she said vehemently to Isabel, that night. "Next time, I'll either import a colony, or let the whole thing alone. Either I will go and live with them, or nothing. It doesn't do any good to drag them here to pine for their ashbins. Just wait till next year, Isabel, and we'll try one of the settlements. This year, I've got to go to Quantuck and enjoy myself."

With whatever misgivings she started for Quantuck, she certainly achieved her end of enjoying herself. The summer colony, that year, was a large and lively one, and Phebe threw herself into it with the same fervor which had marked her entrance into slumming, and, before that, into medicine. Skeletons and syllabi appeared to be alike forgotten; golf and swimming lessons took their place, and Phebe revelled in her out-of-door life as simply and as sincerely as Mac himself. Out on the cliff at dawn, down on the beach for the bathing hour, out to the links for the afternoon, back on the beach to watch the moon rise, she was perpetually active, perpetually in earnest, perpetually in a hurry. To the others, her energy was amusing and, at times, a little wearing. They liked better to spend long hours on the beach, where their awning soon became a focal point for the fun of the bathing hour; they loved to roam over the moors, to sit down now and then on their own broad piazzas and glance from book to sea and from sea to book again with the curious indifference to time and literature which is characteristic of the place.

"Do stay down here, this afternoon," Theodora urged her, one day. "The Bensons are coming over here soon, and it is much more fun to be here, a day like this, than to be prancing around those links."

But Phebe shook her head.

"I didn't come down here to frivol, Ted; I leave that to you. Nobody knows when I may have another chance to get myself in good form at golf, and I must make the most of this."

"But there are more days coming, and the Bensons are such pleasant people to know."

"I know more people now than I can get any good of," Phebe said, as she balanced her driver, and then swept it around in a circle with a force which nearly overturned her. "What's the use of any more? There comes Harold; he's going to caddy for me, to-day. I must go."

"What do you suppose can be the attraction out at the links?" Theodora said, after she had gone.

"Sheer delight in the sport," Hubert answered lazily, for he was sprawling on the sand by his sister's side, and it seemed almost too great an effort to speak.

"Isn't there any attendant knight?" Hope asked. "Phebe is impenetrable; but I have sometimes wondered whether there might not be a social side to it, rather than athletic."

"Don't waste any romance on Babe, Hope," Hubert advised her. "I wondered about it, myself, for there is rather a gay crowd out there, and I didn't know what might be going on. I went out, one day. I found the others all in a bunch, and Babe tearing around the links all by herself, with her poor caddie trotting hard to keep up with her."

"Who's that? Babe?" Allyn had suddenly plunged into the midst of the group. "I hear that the caddies are talking of a boycott, charging her double fees unless she goes slow. She plays a smashing game; but there's no sort of sense in the way she goes about it."

Theodora yawned.

"Babe is upsetting all my ideas," she said languidly. "I had always regarded golf as a suitable amusement for stout elderly persons who waddled, a good deal like the caucus race in Alice. Babe's vigor fairly takes my breath away."

"Same with her swimming," Allyn remarked, with a certain pride. "She's gone into it all over."

"Into the surf?" Cicely inquired, as she scooped little mounds of sand over his feet.

"Yes, just that. She swims under water like a fish. There isn't another girl here to beat her. You are nothing but a porpoise beside her, Cis, and you swim fairly well. Hope, I do wish you'd take lessons. I'm tired of seeing you chug up and down beside that lifeline."

"Do you know," Theodora said meditatively; "I'd rather face the footlights at the Metropolitan than come down this beach at the bathing hour. It makes me feel pigeon-toed in the extreme."

Cicely eyed her with a calm lack of comprehension born of healthy girlhood.

"I don't see why," she said.

"Because you stay in the water, and can't hear the gossip along shore," Theodora answered. "Just you stay out here, some morning, and sit in the Dragons' Row, as Billy calls it, and you will find out what I mean. Charity covers a multitude of sins; but it never drapes an awkward woman in an unbecoming bathing suit."

"That is where Babe has the advantage," Hubert remarked. "She isn't exactly graceful; but she is no more awkward than an unbroken colt."

"And she acts a good deal like one," Hope added, laughing. "Still, she may get broken soon, so let's let her go her ways in peace. She has worked hard, the past six months, and she deserves to be allowed to take her vacation in any form she chooses."



CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Down on the shore, Dragons' Row was holding high carnival. It was the bathing hour, when those who had much energy plunged through and through the breakers, those who had little floundered in the edge of the foam, and those who had none sat upright under the awnings, lorgnette in hand, and passed judgment upon their fellows. The tall, sinewy bathing master sat on the shore, his yellow collie beside him, enjoying an interval of well-earned leisure, for at this season he was the most conspicuous and the most popular figure on Quantuck beach. Just now, he was looking on in manifest pride at the skill of his latest pupil, Phebe McAlister. Even Dragons' Row fell silent, when Phebe took to the water for her noon bath. It was good to see her free, firm step as she came down the board walk, dressed in the plain black suit which set off her fresh, clear skin and her bright hair. Phebe scorned caps entirely, and no sunburn could roughen her cheeks. Her suit fitted her, and she was as trim and comely in it as in her more conventional raiment. Once on the beach, she had a trick of standing for a moment, looking out at the distant water with an unconsciousness which was not feigned, then rapidly measuring the incoming wave, she chose the exact moment of its rising to curl over and break, plunged through it and, after an interval when the onlookers waited breathlessly, she reappeared on the farther side and swam tranquilly away up the shore. Hope might cling to the lifeline and be boiled to her heart's content, and Theodora was welcome to paddle about in the thick of the crowd, with Hubert and Billy beside her. To Phebe, there was something fairly intoxicating in the knowledge of her strength, in feeling the free, firm play of her muscles and in conquering the power of the sea.

The wind had been blowing strongly, all the morning, and the waves were rolling in heavily. Their green tops were crested with white foam which rose high and higher, curved over as softly as a rose petal, balanced for a brief second, then fell with a crash and went flowing up the bank of the beach, circling and twisting in countless eddies that now and then crept to the very awnings and caused a stampede among their inhabitants. A dozen portly matrons sat in the sand, rocking to and fro as the wave came up about them and receded; and children innumerable pranced around them, playing tag with the tricky surf that often caught them unawares.

"Grandma," Mac said, trudging up to the McAlister awning with a pail of sand under his arm; "isn't vat sky just lovely? I'd like to fly up vere, and maybe God would let me work ve sun."

"Do you think you could work it, Mac?"

"Yes, it goes just like ve clock. He winds it up wiv a key, and ven it goes all right. Grandma!"

"Well?"

Mac dropped his sand into her lap, and then plumped himself down by her side.

"Did you see vat funny man in ve pinky suit? Well, he's Mrs. Benson's boy."

"Hush, dear!" Mrs. McAlister said hastily, for Mrs. Benson's awning was next her own.

"What for should I hush? He is funny; just you look at him and see."

"Mac is earning his right to a place in Dragons' Row," Hubert observed from the spot, ten feet away, where he was taking a sunbath between plunges. "Why don't you come in, mother?"

"I dare not face the critics," she answered laughingly, while she emptied Mac's sand from her lap. "I shouldn't come out of it as well as Babe does."

Hubert raised himself on his elbow and looked after his sister with evident satisfaction.

"She's the best swimmer on the beach, except Mr. Drayton," he said, as he dropped back again and burrowed his brown arms into the sand. "If he gives her many more lessons, she'll beat him at his own trade, and that's saying a good deal."

Phebe, meanwhile, had been swimming with the tide and was now far up the shore. There she landed herself through the breakers as craftily as a fisherman lands his dory, and came tramping back toward the awning onto more. Not even the deep sand could hamper her light step, as she came striding along with a perfect disregard of the buzz which passed along the line of awnings parallel with her coming.

"Miss Phebe McAlister, Dr. McAlister's daughter, splendid looking girl, but rather eccentric, they say." "A perfect snob; but I don't know as I blame her. Sister to Mrs. Farrington, that tall woman with the handsome husband." "Sister to Mrs. Theodora McAlister Farrington, the novelist. Isn't she superb? But I hear she doesn't care a fig for society."

So the buzz ran on, and Phebe passed by, heedless of it, heedless, too, of the gaze of a young man who stood alone, a little back of the line of awnings. It was evident that he was a stranger, for he spoke to no one, although it is not easy to be unsocial at Quantuck. For the rest, he was tall, strongly built, with a fresh, boyish face; he wore a little pointed beard, and he carried himself with an indescribable air of being somebody at whom it was worth while to look twice.

"Did you see the new man on the beach, this morning?" Allyn asked, at dinner, that noon.

"The new man, when there are new men here, every day in the week!" Theodora's tone was one of amusement.

"Evidently you didn't see him, or you'd speak with more respect. He was a duke in disguise, at the very least."

"Do you mean the man with the Frenchy beard, and his nose in the air?" Cicely asked, with scant respect for the stranger's ducal appearance.

"Yes. Who was he?"

"I don't know. He acted as if he did the beach a favor in even looking at it."

"He didn't look that way at Babe," Allyn remarked, with a chuckle. "I thought sure he was going to applaud her, when she came stalking down the beach."

"Babe does take the beach a good deal after the manner of Lady Macbeth," Lilly observed. "Where was your man, Allyn? I didn't see any titled strangers of my acquaintance."

"He was just back of the Whitmans' awning for a long time. After that, he came down to Mr. Drayton and talked to him. I didn't see him speak to anybody else, though."

"Oh," Hubert said suddenly; "I know the man you mean, Allyn. There is a good deal of him, too. Sam Asquith told me he had just come to the hotel. He is a composer and hails from New York."

"What is his name?" Theodora asked rather indifferently.

"Gifford Barrett."

"Oh!" There was a clatter, as Cicely dropped her knife and fork and clasped her hands in ecstasy. "Really?"

"Is it so painful as all that, Cis?" Allyn inquired.

"Pain! It's utter rapture. I've always felt that, if I could just once look at Gifford Barrett, I could die happy. Do you know who he is, you ignorant ones?"

The others owned up to their mental darkness; but Theodora said vaguely,—

"Seems to me I met him once. The name is half-way familiar."

Cicely groaned.

"Half-way familiar! I should rather say it was."

"Who is he, anyway?" Allyn demanded.

"Who? Why, he wrote the Alan Breck Overture."

"What's that?"

"Allyn! When I have played it on an average of twice a day, ever since I came here! Haven't you any ears?"

"Not for your kind of music," Allyn returned bluntly. "I want a little tune in mine."

"Who is the man?" Billy asked. "Is he really of any account, Cis?"

"I should think he was. Mr. Paulson, my teacher in New York, said he is the greatest American composer," she returned triumphantly.

"A genuine lion, not a duke," Hubert observed. "But I thought composers always wore their hair in flowing ringlets, Cicely. This man is too well groomed to be really inspired."

Theodora laughed suddenly.

"Hu, you remind me of Mrs. Benson. The day after I came, she asked me whether Miss Greenway didn't write books; she thought all people who wrote books were generally a little untidy."

"Did you enlighten her?"

"I couldn't, for I had just ripped my jacket sleeve open for more than two inches. 'Twas made with one of those insidious one-thread machines, and I tried to pull out a loose stitch. Since then, she has avoided the subject of Miss Greenway, and I have spent a good share of my energy in mending the more visible portions of my attire. I didn't know before that the eyes of the world were upon us, as upon a peculiar people."

But Cicely had returned to the charge.

"Cousin Hubert, how long is he going to be here?"

"I'm sure I don't know."

"Who is he here to see?"

"Nobody, apparently, unless his own fair face," Billy answered irreverently.

"Cousin Ted, did you say you knew him?"

"I'm not sure; but it seems to me I met him once."

"Oh, I do hope so. I want just once to meet him and hear him talk."

"Even if his voice has a falsetto crack in it?" Billy inquired.

"Even if he's—dumb!" Cicely's climax was lost in a burst of laughter, in the midst of which she fled from the table.

"Never you mind!" she proclaimed from the doorway. "I'll find a way to meet him yet. You needn't laugh at me, either, for you're every one of you hero-worshippers, if you'd only own it." Then she crossed over to the piazza of Valhalla, where Phebe was drying her hair in the sunshine. Phebe received the great news disdainfully.

"Oh, that man!" she said, with something that came dangerously near to being a sniff. "I saw him. After most of the people were gone, he came down and went into the water."

"Really?" Cicely's tone was rapt. "I wish I'd seen him. How did he look?"

"Atrocious. He is bow-legged, and he wore a rose-colored suit. Against the green of the waves, he looked like a huge pink wishbone."

"Did he swim beautifully?"

Phebe shook her hair back from her shoulders.

"Like a merman," she said; "a forsaken merman with the gout."

"Babe!"

"Well, if you must know the truth, the abject, literal truth, he hung his clothes on a hickory limb, as far as going near the water was concerned. He waded in up to his ankles and stood there, shivering, shivering a day like this! Then he trotted back and forth a few times and went back to the bathhouse again without letting a wave touch him. Booby! If he played golf, he would probably get his caddie to take him around the links in a wheelbarrow. I do hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing the creature get boiled." And, with a final flirt of her hair, she marched away into the house.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

For the next week, Cicely stalked her lion patiently, warily and in vain. Gifford Barrett had come down to Quantuck, firmly resolved that on no conditions would he consent to be lionized. His six weeks in Maine had been all that he could endure. He had at last come to the wise conclusion that his talent, if he had any, belonged to himself and his work, and was not to be spread out thin on biscuits and served up at afternoon teas. He had fled from Maine and from his admiring friends in a mood dangerously near to disgust. His nostrils were tired of incense. He wished ozone, unflavored with anything whatsoever. The symptom was a healthy one and portended good things for the future. Meanwhile, it led him to choose a resort where he knew no one, where he himself was unknown, and where he could be as independent as he liked.

During the first week of his stay, he accomplished his ends. He went his own way at his own times; he ignored the many inviting glances cast in his direction; he talked only to the bathing master, the native fishermen and the waiter at his table. With observant eyes, he took in the least details of his surroundings; but he did it in an unseeing fashion that completely misled the members of the summer colony who discussed him largely under their awnings and wrangled solemnly over the important question as to whether he was surly, or only shy.

On his side, Gifford Barrett was gaining considerable amusement from the morning conventions on the beach. As a general thing, he only watched the people in groups, and entertained himself with making shrewd guesses as to the probable relationships existing in those groups. Only two individuals made distinct impressions upon him. One of these was the tall, lithe girl in the black suit, who walked as well as she swam; the other was also a girl, but younger and less good-looking, and Gifford Barrett found himself wondering how she could possibly be in so many places at once. He appeared to be always falling over her, always coming upon her path, on the cliff, on the moors, at the tiny post office where it seemed to him that he spent half of his time waiting for the leisurely distribution of the mails to be completed. She usually wore a grey bicycle suit, and she was invariably attended by a small grey dog who took unwarrantable liberties, in the post office, with people's trouser legs and even had been known to whet his teeth on the softer portions of umbrellas. To tell the truth, he paid more attention to the dog than he did to the girl; and he was utterly unconscious of the expression of glee that crossed Cicely's face, one day, when he exclaimed,—

"Get out, you small brute!" and accompanied the words with a pettish little kick which reduced the dog to a yelping frenzy.

On one other occasion Cicely had been conscious of penetrating to the nerve centres of her hero; although, fortunately for her peace of mind, she did not know the exact way in which she had accomplished the feat. Early one morning, Mr. Barrett had been strolling along the road nearest the edge of the cliff when as if by chance, there had floated down upon his astonished ears, a high girlish voice singing the second theme of his Alan Breck Overture. For a moment, his lips had curled into a complacent little smile; the next minute, he had sucked in his breath sharply between his clenched teeth. In her excitement, Cicely had mistaken her distance; she had flatted by a full half-tone the final upper note, reducing the tonal climax of the overture to the level of a comic song.

A few days later, however, Cicely was destined to make an impression upon something besides the nerve centres of her hero. As a rule, Mr. Barrett took his baths at odd hours, either going to the beach in the early morning, or else delaying until the rest of the world was at the noon dinner which it sought ravenously, the moment it left the beach. On this particular day, however, his watch apparently had played him false, and he came down upon the sand just as the throng of bathers was at its height. In the eyes of Dragons' Row, he immediately became an object of derision, for it was as Phebe had said, there was certainly no doubt whatever of his being extremely bow-legged, and, strong and powerful as he looked, he kept himself well away from the shock of the breaking waves.

After his wonted fashion, he paddled about in the edge of the water for a few moments, then turned to walk back to the shore. The next moment proved to be his undoing. Unconscious for the once of his appearing, Cicely had been swimming back and forth just outside the line of surf; then borne on the crest of a wave higher by far than any of its fellows had been, she came floating towards the beach. She landed on her feet as usual; but the wave, heavier than she expected, swept her off her balance and sent her sliding up the sand, straight against the retreating heels of her hero. There were two hurried exclamations, there was a splash; then the backward flow caught them, pulled them down and they reached the line of breakers again just in time to be boiled sociably together in the next in coming wave.

Gifford Barrett shook the water from his eyes and rubbed his right arm a little anxiously, as he staggered to his feet again. Cicely had fled to Allyn's side, and the young man nodded curtly to her as he stalked back to the shore. At the water's edge, he was greeted with a voice which sounded strangely familiar to his ears.

"How do you do? Vat was ve time you got boiled; wasn't it?"

No childish voice ever fell unheeded on Gifford Barrett's ears. The stoutest spot in his mental armor yielded to the touch of small fingers, and some of his best comradeships had been with tiny boys and girls. Now, in an instant, all his sense of injured dignity fell away from him, and the watchers under the awnings wondered at the sudden kindliness in his face, as he grasped Mac's pudgy fist.

"Why, Mac, who ever dreamed of seeing you here, old man!"

"I live here now," Mac said gravely; "me and my mamma and everybody, only papa."

"I thought you lived in Helena."

"Not now. We like it better here; it's so funny to sit in ve sand and build pies. Can you build pies?"

"Yes, and forts."

Mac fell to prancing delightedly, quite regardless of the havoc his small shoes were creating among the bare toes of his companion.

"Oh, can you? Truly, no joking? Make me one now."

"Mac!" The call came from the nearest awning.

"Vat's mamma," Mac said. "She wants us. Come." And he tugged at Gifford Barrett's hand.

"Not just now, old man."

"Come. Aunt Teddy's vere, and all ve rest. Come."

"Mac!" This time, the voice was more decided.

"Yes, mamma; but he won't come."

"Mac, come here at once."

There was a brief skirmish; then as usual, Mac conquered, and Gifford Barrett was led, an unwilling victim, to the awning where sat Mac's mother, beyond her a serried rank of Mac's relatives and, beyond them all, a tall girl in a black suit who watched him with dancing eyes.

The situation was not an easy one. It was Theodora who relieved it.

"Isn't this Mr. Gifford Barrett?" she asked, rising to meet him with the easy dignity which she assumed at times and which made her husband feel so proud of her. "You may not remember me, Mrs. Farrington; but I think I met you in New York, two years ago, at a dinner that Mrs. Goodyear gave." And, as she spoke, Theodora was distinctly grateful for the accident which had left a dozen old letters in the tray of her trunk.

With a grave courtesy all his own, Gifford Barrett went through the trying ordeal of an introduction in his bathing suit. Even Phebe was forced to admit that he was well-bred, while, in the distance, Cicely capered about madly, half in rapture that the desired meeting had taken place, half in rage that she could not with dignity annex herself to the group. For one short, ecstatic moment, she held her breath; then she vented her feelings by plunging headlong into the next wave and swimming off as fast as she could. Instead of making his bow and then beating the decorous retreat of an eccentric recluse, Mr. Gifford Barrett, the composer of the Alan Breck Overture, had deposited his tall form in his rose-colored bathing suit on the sand at Theodora's feet.

"No; I thought I wouldn't go in to-day," she said. "I don't care very much about it, when the surf is running so high."

"Your sister doesn't seem to mind any amount of surf," Mr. Barrett said, glancing at Phebe.

Coming nearer him, one saw that his brown eyes were frank and kindly, that his face was attractive when he smiled. Theodora liked him unreservedly; she even began to remember him a little, in a vague sort of way, and she hoped that Phebe would be in one of her more lenient moods. In vain.

"Yes, I like to swim," Phebe said briefly.

"Evidently, for no one could swim as you do, without enjoying it," Mr. Barrett observed, with an enthusiasm which was almost boyish.

"Mr. Drayton swims magnificently, and he hates it."

"Is this your first season here at Quantuck?"

"Yes."

Under cover of her gown Theodora gave Phebe a furtive poke. Phebe turned abruptly and stared at her.

"Well?" she asked.

"Well what?" Theodora said, with a smile.

"What did you want? You poked me; didn't you?"

"I beg your pardon. Did I hit you? I get stiff with so long sitting still. Is Quantuck an old ground of yours, Mr. Barrett?"

"No; I am a stranger here. Your little nephew is the first friendly face I have seen."

"I hope you will be neighborly at the Lodge, then. It is just on the edge of the bluff, and the latch-string is always out. So are we, for that matter. We spend most of our time down here, all of us but Phebe. She infests the golf links."

"You are a golf enthusiast, then Miss McAlister?"

"Yes. Aren't you?"

"No; not just now, at least. Have they good links here?"

"Very." Phebe rose as she spoke.

"Where are you going, Babe?" Hope asked.

"Down to take one more plunge, then back to the house. I'm going out early this afternoon, and I must be ready."

Theodora's next remark fell upon empty ears. Gifford Barrett was watching Phebe as she went away, admiring her tall, lithe figure, her well-set head, and wondering why in the name of all that was musical this girl should snub him so roundly. He searched his mind in vain for some just cause of personal offence; he could not realize that, in Phebe's present state of mind, there was no interest at all for her in a man who could neither swim nor play golf, and that it was characteristic of Phebe McAlister never to hide her feelings. Meanwhile, it was the first time in his life that he had been snubbed by any girl, and he found the experience novel, interesting and by no means satisfactory. As he left the awning and strolled away up the beach, he was resolving that incense and solitude should give way to snubbing. He would see more, much more of this taciturn young woman, force her to talk and, if possible, undermine her antipathy to himself.

Unhappily for Gifford Barrett, however, his conceit was playing him false. Phebe felt no antipathy to him, none whatever; she was only completely indifferent to the very fact of his existence, and she went round the links, that afternoon with a healthy forgetfulness of the fact that she had ever set eyes upon the tall person of the greatest American composer.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"Papa," Allyn said bravely; "I'd like to have a talk with you, before the day is over."

Dr. McAlister looked up in surprise, for the boy's tone was weighted with meaning. During the two or three weeks that they had spent at the shore, Dr. McAlister had been congratulating himself upon the change in his young son. Allyn had seemed brighter, happier, more like the normal boy of his age, and his father had been hoping that some mental crisis was past, that the old moodiness had vanished. For the last day or two, however, Allyn's face had been overcast, and the doctor's anxiety had returned to him once more. Nevertheless, there was no trace of this in his voice, as he answered,—