"If there is one thing meaner than another, it's rain," Corrie announced generally. "I'm going out. Won't you come, Gerard?"

"If rain is the meanest thing there is, it shows real sense to go out in it," Isabel commented, from the window-seat opposite. "That is just like you, Corrie Rose. When I ask you to take me out on a perfectly fair day, you won't do it."

"I?" stunned. "I ever refused——"

"Yes. Yesterday, when I asked you to take me just once around the race course, while the cars were out practising. You know you would not. If it is safe for you, it is safe for me. But never mind; your old pink car won't win, anyhow. He hasn't a chance with the professional drivers, has he, Mr. Gerard?"

"A chance?" Gerard gravely echoed. "Why, several of our best drivers are thinking of withdrawing, since he is entered, because they feel it's no use trying to win if he is racing."

"Oh, you're making fun! But I mean it; I could race that car he is so vain of, with my own little runabout machine."

Corrie dragged a mandolin from beneath his chair and tinkled the opening chords of a popular melody.

The provoking improvisation ended abruptly, as Isabel's well-aimed sofa-pillow struck the singer.

"Do you call that a ladylike retort?" Corrie queried, freeing himself from the silken missile. "Tell her it isn't, Flavia."

"I am afraid," Flavia excused herself. "There are more cushions on that window-seat."

"It was a soft answer, at least," Gerard laughed. "And a good shot."

"Oh, I taught her to pitch, myself. Now I'm sorry," deplored her cousin.

"Too late," Isabel returned complacently. "I called that a cushion carom, Corrie. And my car would not fall to pieces. Flavia, he is feeding candy to Firdousi."

Flavia looked over with the warm brightening of expression Allan Gerard had learned to watch for when she regarded her brother, and which never failed to stir in him the half-wistful envy of the first day when he had seen her so gazing at the driver of the pink racing car.

"If Corrie can teach a Persian kitten to eat candy, he probably can teach it to digest candy," she offered serene reply. "Besides, he loves Firdousi, as much as I do."

"I only gave him some fruit-paste to see his jaws work," the culprit defended. "He needs exercise. And so do I."

"Not that kind, yours work all the time. It is only an hour since breakfast and you have talked ever since," corrected his cousin.

"I haven't!"

"You have."

Corrie ran his fingers through his heavy fair hair, carefully set the purring kitten on the floor, and stood up.

"All right, if you say so," he submitted gracefully. "What you say, I stand for."

The argument was pure sport, of course. But with that last playful sentence, Corrie suddenly turned his dark-blue eyes upon Isabel with an expression not playful, as if himself struck by some deeper force in the words.

"What you say, I stand for," he repeated, and paused.

Flavia and Gerard both looked at him. All the fresh ardor of first love, all the impulsive faith of eighteen and its entire devotion invested Corrie Rose and illumined the shining regard in which he enveloped his cousin. There was in him a quality that lifted the moment above mere sentimentality, a young strength and straightforward earnestness at once dignified and pathetic with the pathos of all transient things that must go down before the battery of the years.

It would have been difficult to encounter a more enchanting family life than that into which Allan Gerard had been drawn. The Rose household was as redolent of simple fragrance as a household of roses, in spite of its costly luxury, its retinue of servants and lavish expenditure. Thomas Rose's wealth had been made so long since, before the birth of the younger generation, that to one and all it was merely the natural condition of affairs, not in the least affecting them personally. Money was very nearly non-existent to them, since they never were obliged to consider its lack or abundance. They spent as they desired, precisely as they ate when hungry or drank according to thirst, without either stint or excess. It was Arcadian, it was improbable, but it was so. And the guard-wall that encircled their gilded Arcadia was a strong mutual affection not to be overthrown from without. Only by internal treason could that domain fall.

It was not in one day that Gerard had come to understand this in its fullness; he had learned bit by bit. For there was nothing at all angelic about the gay family. But now he first realized, as he watched Corrie, that Isabel Rose was placed here by circumstance and not by fittedness. She was too earthen a vessel, however handsome and wholesome, to contain that fine sun-shot essence distilled from the fountain of youth which her cousin poured out for her taking. Gerard knew it, as he saw her matter-of-fact acceptance of the gaze that should have moved even a woman who did not love Corrie.

Yet, they would probably marry one another, he reflected. There was nothing to interfere, if she consented. He felt an elder brother's outrush of impatient protection for the boy; involuntarily he turned to Flavia with a movement of regretful irritation at the folly of it all, a folly he divined that she also recognized.

Flavia met his glance, and read its impatience and regret. How she applied it was a reflection less of her own mind than of Isabel's; she fancied Gerard jealous of this open wooing of the other girl, and mutely asking her own intervention.

That intervention was not easy to give. In spite of herself, the days with Allan Gerard had affected her so far. Stooping, she lifted Firdousi to her lap, gaining a moment before breaking the silence that had fallen upon the group.

"Where are you going to take Mr. Gerard, Corrie?" she inquired. "Are not the possibilities storm-limited?"

"He isn't going to take him anywhere," Isabel calmly interpolated. "They are going to stay in and amuse us. At least, that is what I say, if he is going to stand for it. He said he would, but it's some large order."

Corrie threw back his head, all seriousness vanishing before his laughter.

"Just you let father catch you slinging Boweryese like that, Miss Rose," he begged, moving aside to stuff a handful of candy into either coat-pocket. "He loves to hear girls talk slang. But it is some classy order, all right, if you come to think of it; I guess I won't commence to-day. I'm going over to show the Dear Me to Jack Rupert, Flavia; he thinks he can tell me why her engine misses."

"In the rain, dear?" his sister wondered.

"'Snips and snails and gasoline tales, are what little boys are made of,'" Isabel quoted derisive Mother Goose. "He won't melt; let him go. Mr. Gerard, you do not want to go out in a sloppy motor boat, do you?"

"If you will forgive my bad taste, I believe I shall go with Corrie," Gerard deprecated, rising. He looked again at Flavia, but she offered no suggestion that he stay.

"That's the idea," approved the gentleman in question. "I'll ring for our raincoats."

There was a period of silence in the many-windowed, octagonal library, after the two young girls were left alone. Flavia continued to play with the drowsy kitten. Isabel, chin in hand, gazed across the rain-drenched window-panes, her full lips bent discontentedly. The first diversion was effected by the smart slap of a maple-leaf flattened against the glass by a gust of wind, directly across the watcher's line of vision.

"P.P.C.," interpreted Flavia, surveying the large pale-golden leaf, as it adhered to the wet pane opposite her cousin.

"Now, what may that mean?" Isabel demanded.

"Pour prendre congÉ, of course. Those are the farewell cards of departing summer. See her coat-of-arms on it: a gold-and-crimson sunset?"

Isabel eyed her companion with scornful superiority.

"You had better talk sense," she counselled. "That is a good stiff north wind blowing, and Corrie is just as reckless with his motor boat as he is with his car. He and Mr. Gerard are likely to be half-drowned—and I am glad of it."

"Isa!"

"I am glad. It serves them right for leaving me at home and going off with that mechanic. I know why Corrie did it, too; he didn't want us to be together all day. He is jealous of Mr. Gerard because he likes me."

"Corrie does?"

Isabel launched a glance of malicious comprehension over her shoulder, smilingly meaningly.

"Oh, Corrie! Of course! But I meant Mr. Gerard. Anyone can see how Corrie hates to have him with me."

Flavia adjusted the blue-satin bow upon Firdousi's neck, saying nothing for a moment. She did not intend to put the question hovering at her lips, yet suddenly the indiscreet words escaped her:

"Then, you think Mr. Gerard is—interested in you?"

"Did you ever know a man to come here without being interested in me, Flavia Rose?"

The superb arrogance was a trifle too much to escape retort, even from the considerate Flavia.

"Well, there was Mr. Stone," she recalled, with intention.

Isabel colored richly, her handsome light-gray eyes hardened. The recent episode of Mr. Ethan Stone had not been one of her triumphs in flirtation.

"He was almost as old as uncle," she exclaimed sharply. "He would have died of fright at the things Mr. Gerard and Corrie and I like to do, anyway, if he had stayed here. He was all nerves. So are you, for that matter. You are worried over Corrie now, you know you are."

Flavia never quarrelled; she had an abhorrence of scenes. But that did not imply a lack of capacity for anger. She rose, a straight, slim figure in her blue morning-frock, the kitten in her arms.

"If I were with him, I should not be worried," she stated with dignity. "I am never afraid when I am there to share what happens. I think I will go upstairs."

And she went, leaving the other girl to devise her own amusements.

In her own room, Flavia pushed aside the window-curtains to look out. In all the dripping landscape she saw no trace of her brother or their guest; the guest, half of whose visit was now past. The next day would be Sunday; one of the two weeks she had unreasoningly dreaded was gone, already. Was she glad, or sorry? She did not know. But she continued to look from the window; there was indeed a strong north wind blowing, and Corrie, if not reckless, certainly used the least margin of safety.

It was impossible to be more safe from drowning than Corrie was at that time. He was in fact on land as dry as the weather permitted, engaged in operating a small ciderpress for the benefit of himself and Gerard, at a certain old-fashioned farm where he was—as he himself explained—persona very grata indeed.

"They are used to me," he supplemented. "Wonderful what people can get used to, isn't it?"

"It surely is," Gerard agreed, from his seat on an overturned barrel. He contemplated interestedly the picture Corrie presented with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, his coat off and his bright hair flecked with ruby-hued drops of the flying liquid. "See here, Corrie, what are you planning to do with yourself?"

"Do? Meet Rupert and try out the Dear Me, of course. Why?"

"I didn't mean that way. College? Business?"

"Oh! Would you pitch over that tin-cup, please? Why, I am all through college."

"Through it! Before you are nineteen?"

"Jes' so. Like to see the pretty blue-ribboned papers that prove it?" He sat down on the press, drying his face with his handkerchief. "You see, my father had tutors to lavish all their wisdom and attention on little Corwin B. Rose, and I never had to wait while the rest of a class ploughed along, so I got through the usual junk and was ready for college at fifteen plus. So I entered at New York, where I could drive back and forth from home each day, and finished up the college business. It was a nuisance and I wanted to get it over, so I hustled a bit. The classical course, you know, not the professional. I graduated last Spring, just before I met you at the twenty-four-hour race. You look surprised."

"I should not have thought it of you."

"You didn't suppose I could work?" The mischievous blue eyes laughed at him. "I can, when I have to. And studying doesn't hit me very hard, although I'd rather be out-doors."

"Not that, exactly. You do not look it," Gerard said slowly. He could not explain the effects he had seen left by college life with unlimited money at command, or how he was moved by their utter absence here.

Corrie gave way to open mirth.

"What a compliment! My word! Fancy! Well, I can't help my face. Anyway, you think I look as if I could drive a car, so I'm satisfied. Do you know," his expression sobered as he leaned forward, fixing earnest eyes on his companion's, "I would rather be you, do what you are doing, than be or do anything else in the world. Of course, I shan't get the chance—probably I couldn't do the work if I did—but I should love it."

Gerard actually colored before that ardent admiration, taken unaware.

"Corrie Rose, you are given to the folly of hero-worship; and heroes are few," he accused sternly.

"I don't know about that, Mr. Gerard."

"I do. But, Corrie——"

"Present."

Gerard stood up, reaching for his raincoat.

"Beware of heroine-worship, it is the folly. When you find the real woman, get on your knees, where you belong, before a grace of God, but don't build shrines to an imitation."

Astonished, Corrie paused, upright beside the ciderpress, then smiled with a blending of pride and serious exaltation.

"No danger of that! I—that can never happen to me," he assured quietly. "I am safe-guarded from imitations, win or lose. I believe, if I am given to hero-worship, that I'm pretty good at picking the right subjects for it. Had enough cider?"

"Too much, probably. If I am ill to-morrow, I shall tell Rupert that you poisoned me. Are you going around to pay the lord proprietors of the place for what we have consumed?"

"Who, me? If I did, Mrs. Goodwin might box my ears for the impertinence; she has boxed them before. I grew up around here, remember. The first acquaintance I made with this house was when I shied an apple at the family tabby as it sat sunning itself on the well-curb, and bowled it in. Naturally, I hadn't meant to hit it; the beast stepped forward just as I fired. I nearly fell in, myself, trying to get it out, but the well was deep and I couldn't raise a meow or a whisker. It was a fine November Sunday, I remember, and while I was busy the family drove into the yard, home from church. I bolted. No one saw me go, but by and by I began to remember all the yarns I ever had heard about people getting typhoid fever from polluted well-water, and to imagine that entire household dying on my hands. Remorse with a capital R! I felt like Cesare Borgia and Madame de Brinvilliers and the Veiled Mokanna all rolled into one. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I sneaked into Flavia's room at two o'clock in the morning, for counsel."

"She gave it?"

"She gave it. You can always count on Flavia. I can see her now, sitting up in bed with her hair braided in two big yellow plaits and her troubled kiddie countenance turned to me.

"'You will have to tell either papa or those people,' she decided, wise as a toy owl. 'And if you tell them, they will surely tell papa, so perhaps you would rather tell him yourself. But I am sorry, dear darling.'

"So I 'fessed up, after breakfast."

"What happened?" Gerard questioned.

"We drove over to the farm together, and father went in for a private interview with old man Goodwin. After which he, father, escorted me around to the well and informed me that I was to drink a cup of that water. Phew, I would rather have drunk hemlock! I wasn't much given to begging off when I got into trouble, but I tried that time, all right.

"'It's what you've left these folks to drink,' said he, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at me. 'It would have been a lot more pleasant for you to swallow if you had owned up two days ago; just keep that as a reminder never to put off a thing you ought to do. Take your medicine, Corwin B.'

"I took it. But it almost killed me." He shook his blond head disgustedly. "I told him I would probably die of typhoid, or something worse. He said we would chance it."

"Still, it was a chance, Corrie."

Corrie calmly fastened the last button of his raincoat.

"No, I guess not. You see, old Goodwin had told father that they pulled pussy out of the well ten minutes after I ran away, the first day. She was clinging to the bucket, pretty wet, but healthy and merry. Father told me the truth, before dinner-time; I didn't seem to care for luncheon, that day. Have you got a pencil? I've lost my fountain-pen again; that's the third I've bought this month."

Gerard produced the pencil.

"It was a rough joke on you, though," he commented. "Didn't you resent it?"

Corrie lifted his bright clear glance from his task of tearing a blank leaf from his notebook.

"Hadn't I earned it?" he asked. "Keep the lines straight, Gerard; my father never punished me in anger, nor unless I could first admit I deserved it and we could shake hands on it afterward. Of course, that sort of thing ended five years ago—there never was much of it—but there couldn't be closer friends than we have been, right through. We have kept each other's respect, we couldn't get along without it; and we expect a good deal of each other, too. I just don't want you to misunderstand."

He scribbled his signature across the bit of paper, and secured the legend to the ciderpress.

"There; now the Goodwins will know who has been here. Ready?"

"Ready," Gerard assented.

The rain had ceased; the vigorous broom of the north wind was sweeping the broken storm-clouds across a gray sky. The drive to the yacht club was accomplished pleasantly and quickly.

"I told Rupert to meet us here at noon," Corrie observed, when they stopped at the pier. "And I had lunch for three sent over, this morning. What a deserted old hole the club is in October! Hello, what——"

From beneath the tarpaulin cover of a long, polished motor boat moored in the wall-locked artificial harbor, a frowsy head had projected, to be instantly withdrawn into shelter at sight of the two young men. The genus of that head was unmistakable, the action significant. Both arrivals halted involuntarily.

"Club steward?" inquired Gerard, with irony.

"Tramp!" flared his companion, recovering breath after the first shock of amazement at the audacity of the intruder. "A dirty, lazy hobo in my boat! Lying on my cushions, mauling my things, running my engine for all I know. Oh!"

"Hold on," Gerard advised. "Better investigate."

But Corrie was already at the edge of the pier.

"Come out of there!" he shouted imperiously. "Come out, I say, or I'll come aboard and throw you out. What do you mean by it? Come out, I tell you."

The head slowly emerged, a red head in need of combing; its owner rested his arms on the gleaming mahogany deck and turned a sullen, unshaven face on his challenger.

"Stand me a quarter, an' I'll beat it," he invited raucously.

"A quarter! You'll beat it without a cent and do it quick, or go to jail. That is my boat, do you hear? Come out. What are you doing there? Stealing?"

"Sleepin', if you want to know."

"I've got a right to know. Are you going to take your filthy self off my cushions, or am I going to throw you off?"

"You?"

"Yes, me. Who do you think?"

The man measured his young antagonist with unhurried scrutiny, yawned, and ostentatiously settled himself in a position of greater comfort.

"You can't do it," he sneered. "Send a man."

The Dear Me was not anchored, but moored to the pier by a pulley and tackle. Before the diverted Gerard guessed his purpose, Corrie had hauled in the boat's bow by the running line attached and swung himself raging into the craft below. There was a choked oath, a sound of rending canvas, then the clatter and thud of combat in close quarters.

It was over before Gerard could do more than haul the reeling, water-drenched boat again within reach. A great splash, a cry changing to a smothered gurgle, announced a threat fulfilled.

"I don't want any help," panted Corrie, standing erect and dishevelled, fiery blue eyes on his floundering enemy. "He's had enough, I fancy. Here, the water is only five feet deep, you chump! Not that way! Throw me an oar, Gerard—he'd drown himself in a saucer. Here, catch hold, you. What's the matter with you?"

"You pitched him into pretty cold water," Gerard reproached, between amusement and pity. "Got him? Look out! You'll capsize!"

Corrie had him, by the collar, and brought him to the pier, a streaming, shivering wreck.

"Man's size, am I?" demanded the victor. "Here, what are you shaking like that for? You'll kill yourself, man."

The captive looked at him, speechless, shuddering miserably in the boisterous rush of wind that wrapped his wet garments about him like a sheath of ice.

"You silly idiot," Corrie snapped impatiently. "Why didn't you do as I told you? Open the basement door, won't you, Gerard, while I bring him? We'll be sure to find a fire there. Are you going to come quietly, yes?"

The victim followed tamely to the lower part of the building, where Corrie threw open a furnace-door and installed him in the red glow of heat.

"Take off your clothes," he commanded. "Trying to get pneumonia, are you, so I will feel like a brute? Oh, I'll give you something to wear; I've got a lot of old duds in my locker here. What are you laughing at, Allan Gerard?"

"The responsible man's burden. Never mind me, go on with your rescue."

"I should like to throw something at you."

"Haven't you got enough on your hands?"

The raillery struck some note in the man's pride. He looked from Gerard to Corrie, who was bringing an armful of assorted clothing, with a reawakening defiance not so much evil as primitive.

"You couldn't have put it over me so easy," he announced sombrely, "if I'd had the feed I bet you got this morning."

The garments escaped Corrie's grasp.

"Feed? You're hungry?"

"What you think I was sleepin' in your dinky boat for, if I had the price of anythin'? It had a blanket in it an' was better than the open, that's why."

"Why didn't you say so," Corrie stormed at him hotly. "Get into those clothes and come upstairs. Or, no; I'll bring it down, stay there."

It was an elaborate lunch-hamper that presently was brought in and set down.

"Eat it," was the concise direction. "That vacuum-bottle is full of hot coffee; drink it. For Heaven's sake stop shivering—why couldn't you speak? Rupert is coming, Gerard. I heard the motor-horn down the road."

Gerard discreetly had turned his back to the scene, reading a last-season bulletin of yacht racing that was fixed to the wall at the end of the room.

"You want to start?" he interpreted, as Corrie joined him.

"Well—I hope you won't mind, but I don't see how we can. I have got to stay here until that chattering, shaking——"

"'Brimstone pig,'" supplied Gerard, with a recollection of the unforgettable Mrs. Smallweed.

"Thanks. Until he finishes and can leave, for the steward will put him out if he finds him here alone."

"That cannot be long."

"No, but," he hesitated, engagingly confused. "But we are miles from a restaurant, you know, and I had to feed him somehow, and there wasn't anything except our luncheon that I had sent over for the trip. So I suppose we had better drive home and get some eats there. It is a shabby way to treat you, all right, after bringing you out."

Gerard dropped his hand on the other's shoulder, his laughing eyes very kind.

"Corrie Rose, how many times a year do you throw your offenders overboard, and give them your own lunch to make up for it?" he challenged.

There was no lack of perception in Corrie; he recognized both the innuendo and its truth.

"About every day," he confessed. "My temper slips. Everyone expects it of me, so it's all right. At least, it has been all right; I guess I've got to stop."

"Corrie, you did not believe me in earnest?"

"No, it isn't that." He shook his head as if to shake off a vexing thought. "I—it makes me feel like a brute to think I've been knocking out a half-starved man and throwing him into that water because he crawled under an old blanket in my boat for shelter. Why didn't I question him decently? I must put on the brake, or I'll spoil something without intending it."

Gerard opened his lips to deny the danger and recall the provocation received, but for some reason he did not analyze, closed them without speaking. The two stood together in silence for many moments, looking out at the gray-green expanse of tumbling water.

"I'll be goin'," the hoarse voice of the involuntary guest said, behind them. "Obliged for your feed."

There was a tentative quality in the statement, an attempt to carry off easily a situation capable of unpleasant developments, a studied ignoring of his captor's possible right to detain him. But Corrie swung around with a face of open sunniness that shamed suspicion, his hands in the pockets of his long overcoat.

"Good enough! Did you find what you liked, or rather, like what you found?" he responded.

The hard face relaxed into a reluctant humor, the man looked again to assure himself of the inquirer's seriousness.

"The best ever," he essayed social graciousness. "I ain't left much. Your little caramels were fine."

"Caramels? Who on earth put in caramels? Armand must have lost his mind! What kind of caramels?"

"Wrapped in tin paper, they were, in a little tin box."

"Wrapped——Holy cats, Gerard, he has eaten the concentrated bouillon squares! They were not to eat, man; they were to be dissolved in a cup of boiling water, to drink."

"They tasted all right. I guess they'll go. I'll be movin'."

"Go? Well, I hope so; you must have enough concentrated beef in you to nourish an army. You are going, you say. Where to?"

"The big town."

"What are you going to do when you get there?"

The man's dissipation-dulled eyes searched the candid face of the questioner scarcely ten years his junior, then he looked to Gerard with a confused and reluctant unease, as he might have looked had Corrie been a young girl whose innocence he feared to offend.

"Aw, lots of things," he evaded, with a short, embarrassed laugh. "You don't want to hear me talk, mister. I'll get there, now I'm fed up."

"Do you want me to find work for you around here? I can."

"My jobs are a different kind, mister. I couldn't stay in yours."

Corrie brought his hand from his pocket.

"All right, as you like. Take this for good luck and we'll call ourselves even. Square, is it?"

The man took the bill awkwardly, his embarrassment deepened.

"You're square, sure," he signified.

As his slouching, bulky figure went out the door opposite, it crossed the small erect form of Jack Rupert, who entered.

"Us for home," Corrie greeted the arrival. "It is too bad to have brought you over for nothing, Rupert, but—what's the matter?"

The mechanician's countenance was a study in disgust, as he contemplated one of his polished tan boots, a high-heeled, ornate affair of the latest design labelled "smart." Off the race course and outside of hours, Rupert had one passion: clothes.

"I ain't registering any complaints if the rest are satisfied," he acidly returned. "But stepping in a puddle of wringing rags that the town board of health ought to condemn for making a noisy demonstration ain't what I look forward to all day as a treat. As for going home, I'm ready, myself. The trip we're missing will keep awhile this weather. The water is mussed bad and the only time I ever was car-sick was on the boat to Savannah."

"Did he spoil his pretty shoes?" Corrie teased, speculatively eyeing the heap of wet, unsavory clothing. "Never mind, Briggs shall make them good as new with his Transcendant Tan for Tasteful Tootsies; you haven't seen that darky of mine shine boots. I don't know what to do with those clothes, Gerard, so I think I won't do anything. Let's go home before we starve. Rupert, don't you approve of charity?"

"I ain't fitted to say; nobody ever showed me any. I always got exactly what I worked for, measure evened off and loose-packed. If I sneaked into somebody's boat-garage without an invitation, I wouldn't get a bath and breakfast and a greenback; I'd get ten dollars or ten days from the first judge in the stand. And so would you."

Corrie paused, struck.

"I? Why?"

"You. Why? What's the answer? I don't know, but I know the type. You keep your score-card and watch it happen; you'll find you get just what you enter for. Nothing more and nothing less."

"'Nothing more and nothing less,'" Corrie repeated, unconsciously exact. "Well," his dancing smile flashed out, "we don't want any more than that, do we? I'll be content with the life I earn."

"It's a good thing, for that's all we'll get," was the terse reply. "When some folks start to kick a brick wall, luck drops a feather pillow between. Other people stub their toes. I ain't crying bad luck, because I never had any; I'm just saying we'll stub our toes, if we kick the wall. We don't have to kick it."

"Rupert is a philosopher," Gerard observed, not mockingly or in ridicule, but as one stating a fact.

His mechanician nodded coolly.

"Calling names don't count. I've raced long enough to know a type of car when I see it, and I've lived long enough to tell a type of man. The way their heads set does it, maybe. Did you know the ladies were upstairs?"

"The ladies?" echoed Gerard, surprised. "They came with you?"

"Not precisely, I guess I came with them. Miss Rose saw me starting and said she was coming over with her own little machine to see the launch off, if she could get her cousin to come, and they'd bring me. So she drove me over. I ain't used to that."

"Ladies?"

"Ladies' driving. My life's insured, so it was all right, though."

"Bully for Isabel!" Corrie approved, pensiveness cast aside. "Come up to them, Gerard. I hear her tooting for us with the horn."

From the little scarlet runabout—the largest motor vehicle Mr. Rose would allow his vigorous niece—Isabel and Flavia had descended.

"We came to see what you were doing," Isabel welcomed the group who issued from the club-house. "I don't suppose Flavia would have come if she hadn't been wondering whether Corrie was drowning himself. Go ahead and start; don't wait on our account. But you had better eat your lunch first, if you haven't already, for you will have no time to eat in the boat on that sea."

"We haven't any lunch," Corrie cheerfully declared. "I gave it to a tramp after I threw him overboard. You're just in time to take us home for luncheon and save our lives."

"You look as if you had been fighting," Isabel criticized, with a scornful survey of his attire. "You are all splashed with dirty water, your cravat is pulled crooked and your coat is torn. We saw your tramp; he passed us a few moments ago and we recognized your blue flannel suit with the Dear Me's insignia on the lapel. Mr. Rupert guessed what you had been doing, when he saw the boat all in disorder and the pier all wet. The man's hairy, dirty face looked horrid above your clothes."

"A contrast to my beauty, not so? Fix my cravat, please, ma'am; I can't see the thing. But his face wasn't dirty, for I washed it."

"Why should I fix your wet cravat? Hold my gloves, then. Where is your scarf-pin? Stolen by your tramp, I suppose."

Gerard had joined Flavia, but neither yet had spoken, watching the cousins. They had not the fluent familiarity of intercourse possessed by the two who looked and acted very like a pair of handsome boys. Moreover, Gerard distrusted himself, fearing to say too much, too soon. He was approaching Flavia carefully and delicately as a man striving to close his hand on some frail, elusive creature whose capture he scarcely dares hope possible. And she gave him no help. Her frank gentleness and impersonal cordiality gave neither encouragement nor discouragement, no foothold smooth or rough.

The actual position he had never even conceived; the fact that she was completely unconscious of his desire to woo her. He had no way of knowing that it was his attitude toward Isabel she considered in all his words and acts, remembering her cousin's confident appropriation of the guest. It was of Isabel that she spoke now, while Gerard hesitated for the right word to offer the girl beside him.

"The roads were very wet and slippery," she remarked. "If Isabel were not a good driver, I think we would have found ourselves in a ditch. Indeed," her soft mouth dimpled into a smile, "once I thought we were in one. One wheel was. But we wiggled out again. Mr. Rupert wanted to put the chains on the wheels, but she said we did not need them."

The thought of Isabel over-ruling the judgment of his racing mechanician unsteadied Gerard's gravity.

"A coarse masculine hand is needed on the wheel, to-day," he confirmed, with ulterior intention. "I believe we had better divide our party differently, on the way back. Let me drive one car and Corrie or Rupert the other. I'll promise not to take any ditches, if you consent."

"Great scheme," Corrie called, overhearing. "I'll take the red near-car home, Isabel."

"No, indeed," Isabel vetoed decidedly. "Mr. Gerard is going to take me home and I shall learn a lot from watching him drive. You can take Flavia in your roadster; Mr. Rupert will ride in the rumble seat."

Being a gentleman, Gerard compelled his expression to evidence pleasant acquiescence. But he was not soothed by the unclouded smile Flavia sent her designated escort.

"Corrie doesn't mind taking me, do you, dear?" she covered her brother's chagrin.

"I surely don't, Other Fellow," he heartily corroborated, coming across to his sister, although the change in his transparent face betrayed his discomfiture at the slight. "You and I have had many a good spin. In you go! Come up behind, Rupert; there is more room here than on the other machine."

"I think Mr. Rupert would rather ride with us, anyhow," Flavia declared, her laughing eyes questioning the mechanician. "I fancied, once or twice on the way over, that he would have preferred to have you or Mr. Gerard driving."

"I ain't making any scornful denials," admitted Rupert, as he stepped in front to crank the motor for Corrie. "I've always looked forward to being killed in a larger machine, myself."

Isabel did not at once enter her own car.

"I can't fasten this glove without taking off the other, and then I can't fasten the other without taking off this," she complained. "I really believe——"

So, the last the three in the departing roadster saw of the two on the pier, Allan Gerard was engaged in buttoning Isabel's glove, while her wind-blown veils fluttered across his shoulders and her flushed, provocative face bent over the task beside his.