If we except Arthur, whose knowledge of the Adirondack woods and waters was that of a naturalist, Lee and Gay were the sportsmen of the family. They had begun to learn the arts of fishing and hunting from excellent masters at the tender age of five. They knew the deeps and shallows of every lake and brook within many miles as intimately as a good housewife knows the shelves in her linen closet. They talked in terms of blazes, snags, spring holes, and runways. Each owned a guide boat, incomparably light, which she could swing to her shoulders and carry for a quarter of a mile without blowing. If Lee was the better shot, Gay could throw the more seductive fly.

There had been a guide in the girls' extreme youth, a Frenchman, Pierre Amadis de Troissac, who had perhaps begun life as a gentleman. Whatever his history, he had taught the precious pair the rudiments of French and the higher mysteries of fishing.

He had made a special study of spring holes, an essential in Adirondack trout-fishing, and whenever the Darlings wanted trout, it had only been necessary to tell De Troissac how many they wanted and to wait a few hours. On those occasions when he went fishing for the larder, Lee and Gay, two little roly-polies with round, innocent eyes, often accompanied him. It never occurred to De Troissac that the children could mark down the exact places from which he took fish, and, one by one and quite unintentionally, he revealed to them the hard-won secrets of his spring holes. The knowledge, however, went no further. They would have told Phyllis, of course, if she had been a sport. But she wasn't. She resembled Lee and Gay almost exactly in all other ways; but the spirit of pursuit and capture was left out of her. Twice she had upset a boat because a newly landed bass had suddenly begun to flop in the bottom of it, and once, coming accidentally upon a guide in the act of disembowelling a deer, she had gone into hysterics. She could row, carry a boat, swim, and find the more travelled trails; but, as Lee and Gay said: "Pill would starve in the woods directly the season was over."

She couldn't discharge even a twenty-two calibre rifle without shutting her eyes; she couldn't throw a fly twenty feet without snarling her leader. The more peaceful arts of out-of-doors had excited her imagination and latent skill.

In the heart of the woods, back of The Camp, not to be seen or even suspected until you came suddenly upon it, she had an acre of gardens under exquisite cultivation, and not a little glass. She specialized in nectarines, white muscats of Alexandria, new peas, and heaven-blue larkspur. But, for the sake of others, she grew to perfection beets, sweet corn, the lilies in variety, and immense Japanese iris.

As The Camp was to be turned into an inn which should serve its guests with delicious food, Phyllis and her garden became of immense importance and she began to sit much apart, marking seed catalogues with one end of a pencil and drumming on her beautiful teeth with the other.

Negotiations had been undertaken with a number of periodicals devoted to outdoor life, and a hundred schemes for advertising had been boiled down to one, which even Arthur was willing to let stand. To embody Mary's ideas of a profitable proposition into a page of advertising without being too absurd or too "cheap," had proved extremely difficult.

"We will run The Inn," she said, "so that rich people will live very much as they would if they were doing the running. One big price must cover all the luxuries of home. We must eliminate all extras—everything which is a nuisance or a trouble. Except for the trifling fact that we receive pay for it, we must treat them exactly as papa used to treat his guests. He gave his guests splendid food of his own ordering. When they wanted cigars or cigarettes, they helped themselves. There was always champagne for dinner, but if men preferred whiskey and soda, they told the butler, and he saw that they got it. What I'm driving at is this: There must be no difference in price for a guest who drinks champagne and one who doesn't drink anything. And more important still, we must do all the laundering without extra charge; guides, guide boats, guns, and fishing-tackle must be on tap—just as papa had everything for his guests. The one big price must include absolutely everything."

Added to this general idea, it was further conveyed in the final advertisement that the shooting was over hundreds of thousands of acres and the fishing in countless lakes and streams. And the last line of the ad, as had been previously agreed, was this:

"Prices Rather High."

And, as Gay said to Lee: "If that doesn't fetch 'em—you and I know something that maybe will."

The full-page ad began and ended with a portrait of Uncas, the chipmunk, front view, sitting up, his cheeks puffed to the bursting point. The centre of the page was occupied by a rather large view of The Camp and many of the charming little buildings which composed it, taken from the lake. Throughout the text were scattered reproductions—strings of trout, a black bear, nine deer hanging in a row, and other seductions to an out-of-door life. For lovers of good food there was a tiny portrait of the chef and adjoining it a photograph of the largest bunch of white muscats that had ever matured in Phyllis's vinery.

A few days before the final proofs began to come in from the advertising managers, there arrived, addressed to Gay, a package from a firm in New York which makes a specialty of developing and printing photographs for amateurs. Gay concealed the package, but Lee had noted its existence, and sighed with relief. A little later she found occasion to take Gay aside.

"Was the old film all right? Did they print well?"

Gay nodded. "It always was a wonderful picture," she said.

"Us for the tall timber," she said—"when they come out."

The final proofs being corrected and enveloped, Gay and Lee, innocent and bored of face, announced that, as there was nothing to do, they thought they would row the mail down to the village. It was a seven-mile row, but that was nothing out of the ordinary for them and it was arranged that the Streak should be sent after them in case they showed signs of being late for lunch.

Gay rowed with leisurely strokes, while Lee, seated in the stern, busied herself with a pair of scissors and a pot of paste. She was giving the finally corrected proofs that still more final correcting which she and Gay had agreed to be necessary.

They had decided that the centrepiece of the advertisement—a mere general view of The Camp—though very charming in its way, "meant nothing," and they had made up their unhallowed minds to substitute in its place one of those "fortunate snap-shots," the film of which Gay had—happened to preserve.

In this photograph the six Darling sisters were seated in a row, on the edge of The Camp float. Their feet and ankles were immersed. They wore black bathing-dresses, exactly alike, and the bathing-dresses were of rather thin material—and very, very wet.

The six exquisite heads perched on the six exquisite figures proved a picture which, as Lee and Gay admitted, might cause even a worthy young man to leave home and mother.

It was not until they were half-way home that Lee suddenly cried aloud and hid her face in her hands.

"For Heaven's sake," exclaimed Gay, "trim boat, and what's the matter anyway?"

"Matter?" exclaimed Lee; "that picture of us sits right on top of the line Prices Rather High. And it's too late to do anything about it!"

Gay turned white and then red, and then she burst out laughing. "'Tis awful," she said, "but it will certainly fetch 'em."

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