WHAT makes the boom go sheering up in the air in that silly way?” Mrs. Massingbyrd asked me.

“It’s trying to gooseneck,” I told her. “And if you would like me to take the tiller——” Now, how foolish this suggestion was, I ought to have known.

“Not at all,” Mrs. Massingbyrd briskly cut me short, pulling the tiller smartly toward her to emphasize her refusal.

The boat jibed, and the next thing we were both in the water. Mrs. Massingbyrd’s shining head came to the surface a few feet from mine. She shook the water from her eyes, gasped for breath once or twice, and then with a magnificent affectation of composure:

“Something told me I ought to wear my bathing suit,” she remarked, reflectively.

“It was vanity told you,” I replied with irritation. Nothing had told me I ought to wear mine. It was just like Lydia Massingbyrd to wear a bathing suit to get capsized in. I’ve never known a woman who so infallibly landed on her feet.

“I think,” she continued, complacently, as we struck out for the shore, not far distant, “I chose a very nice place for spilling us. I know women who would have been capable of doing it in the middle of Long Island Sound!”

“It would have been still more considerate if you’d chosen a spot near the mainland to show your seamanship,” I suggested, with polite sarcasm.

“I thought that all wrecks always took place near Huckleberry Island. I thought that was one of the things one did.” Her voice was a trifle aggrieved, she smiled at me, a smile like a little flickering flame.

“She needn’t,” I thought, “try to put the comether on me.” Suspenders are in the way when swimming, and my heavy, rubber-soled shoes helped to spoil my temper.

“Of course,” I gloomily returned, “our lunch is now at the bottom of the Sound.” I knew that would fetch her. I have never seen a woman who has so retained a child’s unimpaired appetite. Mrs. Massingbyrd turned an uneasy eye on the catboat, which, buoyed by its sail, was floating on its side like some great, awkward, wounded bird.

Mrs. Massingbyrd’s feet struck the sandy beach off Huckleberry Island.

“But we can’t sit here all day, you know, on a desert island, with nothing to eat,” she remonstrated, as she made her way to the shore. “You must do something about it, Bobby. I call it tragic, simply tragic, to think of all that good lunch put out of our reach.”

She was by now quite on dry land, and with great expedition pulled the shell pins from her lovely and extraordinary hair.

The jealous say that Mrs. Massingbyrd’s strength, like Samson’s, rests in her hair. It is that meek, silvery gold color that usually has neither kink nor curl, but in her case it curled riotously, broke out at the nape of her neck in absurd babyish ringlets and at her temples.

“So that was why you upset us?” I asked, irritably. “I would have taken your word for it that it did.”

“Did what?” she queried, rising promptly to the bait.

“Come down to your knees, I mean.”

“You might know that not for anything in the world, with hair as thick and as hard to dry as mine, would I wet it unnecessarily!” she flashed.

“It’s a mercy it’s so fine,” I quoth, maliciously, “or you would never get it up at all.” Mrs. Massingbyrd is notoriously vain of her wonderful hair.

“You might have spared yourself all the trouble,” I continued, cuttingly, as I took off my collar, and began on my shoes. “It’s not nearly as nice a color all soaked and wet; in fact, it’s rather unpleasant and seaweedy!”

“Wait until it’s dry,” she triumphed, radiantly. “You may in the end be glad you came. But I won’t!” she continued. “There’s nothing in it for me! You’re not going to present a sight for sore eyes now or at any other portion of the day! And there’s nothing to eat!”

“You’re a vain and greedy woman, Lydia Massingbyrd,” I said, severely. “And it would serve you right if the lockers of Mason’s boat were empty instead of being garnished with cans of soup and meat, as I suspect them to be.” And I started forth to rescue the capsized boat, but the tide had carried it on the reef, the mast caught between two rocks, and, already strained as it was, it cracked and broke.

And I was due to meet my wife and some other friends off Rye in a couple of hours. That’s what comes of going off on a lady’s sailing party, each man to be sailed down by a girl. A foolish idea, and hatched out, you may be sure, in the crazy pates of Felicia and her friend, Lydia Massingbyrd.

I did what I could for the poor boat. It’s a light little thing, an eighteen-foot cat, and, as I’ve often told Mason, heavily oversparred. I got her on the beach without much trouble, while my companion inquired anxiously, from time to time, as to the state of the larder.

I found I was right. There was soup, and shortly I was warming it by means of a wire cleverly slung around it and a wooden handle. For, luckily, my match case was watertight.

“Necessity is the mother of invention,” said I, taking my companion into favor again.

“Necessity is the mother of indigestion!” she retorted, and I saw her mind was back with our shipwrecked flesh-pots. “I can’t bear canned things!”

She spread her long, wet hair around her like a mantle; the corners of her mouth drooped with a pathetic quiver, changed their mind and flickered out into a radiant little smile, which in its turn gave way to a long chuckle.

“I never quite understood about jibing,” she remarked. “But now I understand perfectly. It’s about the suddenest thing I know. I’ve a very objective mind. A thing has to be put before me actually, in the flesh, for me to comprehend it. That’s what I shall tell the reporters.”

“Reporters?” I wondered.

“Reporters, of course,” she repeated. “And the longer we’re out here, the more there’ll be! They won’t begin to hunt for us until to-night. It’s a good thing Felicia is my lifelong friend;” and Mrs. Massingbyrd laughed again. The situation had none of the serious aspects to her that it had to me. Of course Felicia was Lydia Massingbyrd’s friend, but no woman cares to have her husband absent and missing with another woman, and what with the anxiety and reporters and all—no, I didn’t look forward to the next two or three days.

Mrs. Massingbyrd’s spirits rose during lunch.

“After a swim canned things aren’t really so awful,” she conceded. “I suppose they’ll tell the police and get out searchlights. I’ve had most things happen to me, but this is quite brand new.”

“One would think you were a popular actress,” I complained.

“Well, so, in a way, I am,” she philosophized.

Her hair was drying fast, and hung about her a dress of living gold. Her black silk bathing suit fitted her closely in all the places it ought not to. I marveled that so slender a little creature could be at the same time so deliciously rounded. Her face, ever so slightly tanned, had all sorts of delicious golden tones, her eyes were surprisingly blue and as candidly innocent as those of a delightful child. In her short skirt and her golden hair, so meek in its color, so wayward in its curls, she looked like a little girl.

“Lydia Massingbyrd,” I found myself saying spontaneously, “I forgive you everything! And it’s a lucky thing for me I’m deeply in love with Felicia.”

“I told you you’d be glad you came,” she said, joyously.

“It was worth the price,” I generously conceded. “Your lovely mane is all you have pretended it was. ‘It’s all wool’!”

“A sail!” cried Mrs. Massingbyrd, pointing to a yawl that even as she spoke had rounded the island.

“It’s the Phillips’ yawl,” I agreed.

“Conscientiously, I don’t suppose we can stay shipwrecked any longer than we can help. We’ll have to give up the reporters!” There was a note of disappointment in her voice. “Shout, Bobby!”

I shouted.

“They don’t hear us. What we need is a flag of distress. Wave, wave your coat!” Then catching her long hair in both her hands, she held it far above her head and waved it like a golden banner. The wind caught it and played with it; in her eager abandon she looked like some MÆnad, some fire spirit—choose your own simile for her, but in that moment out there in the full sunlight she had I know not what touch of the superterrestrial.

I believe at that moment it was given to me to see her at the highest point of her somewhat amazing beauty. As she stood there her hand was holding her wonderful hair above her head; she was for a moment outside the pale of everyday womanhood. She was, I tell you, something to commit follies for.

They saw us. The boat put about. Mrs. Massingbyrd let fall the most original and the most beautiful flag that ever waved distress.

“They’ve recognized me,” she remarked with satisfaction. She held a strand of hair high above her head and let it fall. “There isn’t anyone who could have done that.”

“Or who would have done it if they could,” I added, severely.

“Or who would have done it if they could,” she agreed. “Not all women are so conscientious as to what they owe mankind.”

“Indeed they are not,” I put in, sarcastically.

She was on her knees, gathering her hairpins and combs.

“Let your light so shine before men,” said she, cheerfully. “A city that’s built on a hill cannot be hid. Don’t put your candle under a bushel.”

I was putting on my shoes—now fairly well dried—and my ruined collar, just to show I had one.

“I suppose you’re the vainest woman on the seacoast,” I scolded. I am the only man in all Lydia Massingbyrd’s acquaintance who never flatters her, and who from time to time gives her the great benefit of hearing the whole truth about herself.

“I suppose I am, and good reason, too;” and there was some heat in her voice. Her back was toward me; all I could see of her was a mass of silvery gold.

“Now, what shall I do?” she asked. “There’s plenty of time to put up my hair any which way—it would look horrid—I look so nice like this—now, what would you do?”

“You ought to put it up,” I conclusively told her. “It’s an indecent exposure. One would think, to look at you, that you were playing tableaux of Lady Godiva.”

“I shall never get such another chance,” she implored.

“Put up your hair, Lydia Massingbyrd,” I commanded.

“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she moaned. “And now just as there’s going to be any good in it you bully me.” Her mouth dropped again, she looked at me with appealingly candid eyes.

“Oh, have it your way,” I growled. “Show off before Phillips, and Almington, and little Cecilia Bennett, and Mrs. Day, and the Drake boys!”

“Almington!” exclaimed Mrs. Massingbyrd. “That settles it!” and she resolutely shook out her hair again.

“Almington!” I exclaimed, in amazement. “Why does Almington settle it?”

“I can’t bear the man!” cried she, stamping her foot.

“Oh, well, if this is by way of punishment——”

“Cecilia Bennett’s sister is one of my dearest friends.” Apparently she thought this was an explanation.

“And so you want Cecilia to see you with your hair down,” I sneered.

“Men are too dense!” was all she vouchsafed me. “He’s a popinjay of a professional heart-breaker.”

“I suppose you’ll know what they’ll say about you?” I tried another tack.

“I know what they’ll think,” she told me, with her inimitable calm.

“If you have the nerve, it’s no business of mine,” I conceded.

“Felicia’ll be so busy scolding me that she’ll forget all about you,” she suggested, naÏvely.

“There’s something in that,” I was manly enough to confess.

The boat now lay-to in the shallow water. Phillips hailed us.

“You’ll have to put your hair up,” I told her. “They’ve got no dinghy. We’ll have to swim for it.”

“And wet myself all over again? No, indeed; you’ll have to carry me,” she calmly announced. “They can come inshore as far as that.”

“You’ll have to square me with Felicia,” I muttered.

Laughingly Lydia Massingbyrd made a rope of her hair, to keep it safe from the water, that she might the better blind the poor wretches in the boat with its radiance. So carry her I did. As we were well out in the water I heard the snap of Almington’s camera.

“Won’t Felicia be in a wax?” the incorrigible woman giggled in my ear.

“It’s lucky for you it’s me,” I said to her, critically. “Even as it is, it’s most imprudent!”

She looked at me, an impudent gleam in her eye.

“I’m mighty careful in choosing my company when I’m cast away on a desert island,” said she.

II.

“I don’t understand women at all,” I rather rashly confessed to Felicia.

“That’s all the better for us—I mean for me,” she threw back at me.

“But I do understand you’re all a matchmaking lot,” I continued, severely.

“Oh, we’re a matchmaking lot, are we?” Felicia’s tone was one of flattering interest. She was arranging a bit of vine that had somehow gotten torn down. She now turned toward me, the picture of innocent surprise.

“You like matchmaking for the fun of the thing—just as a man likes shooting,” I went on. “You’d marry any person to any other person, regardless of age, position or——”

“Sex?” suggested Felicia, politely.

“Suitability,” I amended; “just for the sake of having a wedding.”

“You’re talking now in the manner and tone of a husband,” Felicia accusingly told me. “Anyone who heard your voice afar off would know you were one.” I paid no attention to Felicia’s interruption.

“If I’m not right, kindly tell me if Lydia Massingbyrd wasn’t matchmaking when she got you to ask Almington and little Cecilia Bennett down here; and if you weren’t matchmaking when you consented to ask them.”

“Undoubtedly it’s because Lydia is anxious to arrange a marriage between them she wanted them here.” Felicia’s tone was so guilelessly axiomatic that it made me uncomfortable.

“Has she told you?”

“She’s told me nothing,” Felicia assured me. “If she’d told me her reasons I couldn’t, as she very well knows, have asked them.”

“And that’s why I say,” I concluded, “that I don’t understand women. First Lydia Massingbyrd told me she couldn’t bear Almington. Then she did her little Venus-rising-from-the-sea act for his benefit. And then, I tell you, Felicia, if ever a mortal woman flirted, it was your little golden-locked friend. And, Jove, she was pretty!”

“What Lydia Massingbyrd needs is a husband,” Felicia declared, “who would keep her from tampering with other people’s! You’ve been utterly ruined ever since you went around that day carrying Lydia all over the place. You talk about her hair in your sleep.”

Again I ignored Felicia and her unjust accusations. “Poor little Cecilia Bennett! Between admiration and fear she was almost frightened to death.”

“Cecilia is a nice, upstanding, decent little girl,” Felicia asserted, aggressively.

“So she is, so she is,” I hastened to agree. “And that is why—she being only two months out of Farmington—you want to marry her to a man like Almington!”

“What’s wrong with Almington?” asked Felicia, still in her most guileless manner, which I have learned to know is the most finished form of impertinence.

“What’s the matter with Almington?” I exclaimed. “Oh, nothing at all! He’s the stuff perfect husbands are made of. He’s ripe, is Almington, for a little, innocent flower of a girl like Cecilia.”

“Almington’s lots of money,” said Felicia, reflectively; “and Cecilia’s mother’s keen for it. You know there’s no end to the Bennett girls, and they’re poor as anything.”

I maintained a disgusted silence, for I had an inkling that Felicia would have been charmed with an outbreak from me about the iniquity of sacrificing young girls on the altar of Mammon. I therefore resolved to commit myself no further.

It was at this moment that Mrs. Massingbyrd arrived.

The two ladies embraced. Then Felicia held her friend at arms’ length.

“Remember,” she warned, “no Croquemitaine! I’ve done two things for you—what you wanted me to—and I’ve asked no questions. So go ahead, but no Lady Godiva here under my roof-tree. No, nor any coming out shrieking burglars at two with your hair down, Lydia Massingbyrd!” And Felicia gave her friend an affectionate shake.

I had the sense that there had passed between the two women intelligences far beyond what appeared on the surface; a feeling that there were in the air all kinds of things—and that these things had passed over my head. In fact, I felt hopelessly at a disadvantage, as a man so often does in the presence of his wife and his wife’s intimate friend; in a word, I suppose I felt like a husband, and I was glad enough to join young Drake, who had come up in the same train with little Cecilia Bennett.

As we strolled off together—

“There’s something awfully nice about a really fresh young girl, when one’s been knocking around with older women a bit,” he confided to me.

“There’s nothing as charming as an unspoiled girl,” I agreed. “And Cecilia is that.”

“I don’t know but the French way is the best. I hate a young girl who’s too darned knowing.”

Now, I knew that Ellery Drake had made calf love to Felicia when Felicia herself had been a young girl of the kind he so eloquently described as “too darned knowing”; and that he had in vain followed the fascinating wake of Mrs. Massingbyrd. So it was not without malice I replied:

“Oh, the less a little, young girl knows the better; give me a tabula rara any time.”

Ellery Drake looked at me sharply. “I shouldn’t go as far as that,” he said. “But I like them like Cecilia—so awfully interested in things you know, and a little bit shy, and all that. Gee! Did you see her stare when you toted Mrs. Massingbyrd into the boat the other day?”

“No wonder,” I said. “You don’t see things like that every day.”

“She’s a wonder, Mrs. Massingbyrd”—Drake was full of enthusiasm—“but almost too spectacular for a quiet man. I think Cecilia was really a little shocked.”

I had noted poor little Cecilia’s what-have-we-here-and-whatever-is-the-world-coming-to expression.

There’s nothing quite as conventional as your properly-brought-up young person; and Cecilia was as perfectly turned out a specimen as a wise mother and a good school could accomplish. She was, in fact, the beau ideal of the young person for whom we keep our magazines spotlessly pure, and in whose behalf we cry aloud when a play is not better than it should be.

“She said afterward,” Drake told me, “that she felt as if she’d been reading one of those society papers that haven’t the best reputation in the world.”

“I didn’t know she was up to that,” I remarked.

“Oh, you don’t know Cecilia. She’s really very funny when you get her alone,” Drake protested. “I’ve known her ever since I was knee-high, so, you see, she’s not a bit shy with me. When she was a little kid, I’d no idea she’d turn out so pretty. The trouble is, they get spoiled so soon,” Drake gloomily went on—“spoiled and knowing and worldly.”

“You can’t expect a flower to keep in bud forever.”

“But you can train it to be a nice, sweet, modest, homekeeping plant, or an exotic thing trained for the flower show.”

He puffed at his cigarette. I saw he thought he’d gotten off a good thing. When I’m with Drake I understand only too well the kind of amusement I so frequently afford Felicia. He enhanced the resemblance by now saying:

“I don’t understand women at all!”

“No?” I encouraged him.

“What the devil is a sweet little thing like Cecilia Bennett doing messing around with a fellow like Almington?”

“He’ll soon take off the bloom,” I said.

If the women were going to match-make, it occurred to me I could do a little work of the kind off my own bat, and I was pleased with my dexterity when Drake enthusiastically snatched at the bait.

“You bet he will,” he said. “He’s not the man for a young girl like Cecilia; nothing more than a baby, you know, who doesn’t know how to take care of herself. Though I’ve nothing against Almington. He’s all right for married women.”

“A perfect companion for Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd,” I sarcastically threw in, but my sarcasm didn’t touch Ellery Drake, for he said, simply:

“Oh, he’s all right for them!”

“So,” I said, magnanimously, “let them take care of him. He’s coming down to-night, and you keep Cecilia out of his clutches.”

Roars of mirth, in which I distinguished the voices of my wife, Mrs. Massingbyrd and Cecilia, now interrupted us, and they all came running across the lawn like a troop of charming, grown-up children.

Indeed, Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd seemed younger than their little companion. I’ve told you that Lydia Massingbyrd has the youngest, most candid eyes I’ve ever seen; and she and Felicia ran down the lawn with the abandon of those who know their world.

Spontaneity is one of civilization’s most perfect flowers, and Cecilia wasn’t as yet civilized enough to have acquired it. She followed the others with a certain dry rigidity that I found perfectly charming for her age and the time she had been in the world.

“No, no; you can’t come,” said Mrs. Massingbyrd, waving us back. “You’ll know soon enough. Don’t tell, Cecilia;” and she caught the child by the arm and carried her along, as they made for the stable.

There was something preposterous in the air. I have known Felicia long enough to recognize a certain irresponsible little laugh as a danger signal. Presently the children came back, Mrs. Massingbyrd with Cecilia still tucked under her wing.

“Yes, it’s the strangest thing,” she was chattering, “the impression I produce on strangers! First they always call me Miss Massingbyrd, then, later, they always ask where Massingbyrd is! Not one person in a thousand will believe I’m a real, bona-fide, dyed-in-the-wool widow!”

Cecilia’s eyes were open wide. I could see in her attitude that she didn’t think it good taste to joke about being taken for a divorcÉe. Nor did I, and I wondered what my friend was up to, for generally Mrs. Massingbyrd adapts herself to her company with all the flexibility in the world.

I followed them into the house, and I was in time to see as pretty a little tableau as ever was presented on the stage.

Discovered on the piazza was Almington, and at sight of him my little ingÉnue, Cecilia, hesitated, and was lost in a sea of blushes.

Mrs. Massingbyrd ran forward and greeted him gayly and gladly. Mamma’s training came to Cecilia’s aid; she gathered herself together and, in spite of burning cheeks and very bright eyes, advanced to meet Almington in good order.

He greeted her pleasantly but indifferently, and turned eagerly to Mrs. Massingbyrd.

“You’re none the worse for your shipwreck, I hope,” he asked.

“I never had a pleasanter day,” Mrs. Massingbyrd assured him. “It’s not often I get a chance to display my only beauty free and unrebuked.”

“Your pictures came out well,” said Almington. “I couldn’t wait for the film to be through. I had it developed at once;” and he felt in his pocket.

Mrs. Massingbyrd held out her rosy palm, then drew it back.

“No, not here,” she decided. “Come down to the rose garden and show them to me there. After all, they’re just for you and me.” And it was with a self-satisfied air, the air of a conqueror, that Almington unfolded his long legs and followed Mrs. Massingbyrd.

I looked at my companions. Cecilia’s cheeks were still hot. I saw she was a little bewildered, but she acted like a little thoroughbred, and made pretty, perfunctory, young-girl talk with Felicia, whose face told me nothing; and with Drake, who looked profoundly pleased.

Mrs. Massingbyrd and her cavalier were strolling up and down in the rose garden at the foot of the terrace. Coquetry was in every movement of her little blond head. Conquest was written large on Almington.

In pursuance of my own little policy, “There goes a lost man,” I remarked.

“He’s been lost so often and won so often that it doesn’t matter much, does it?” said Felicia, lightly. “So if it’s only he that’s lost, we won’t have far to look for him.”

“I thought Mrs. Mass. had turned him down,” remarked Ellery Drake.

“It hasn’t apparently prevented his turning up again,” Felicia replied, pertly.

I looked at Cecilia. Mamma’s training held good; there was a visible strain about her attitude, but she did her best to seem natural. It was Cecilia’s first time under fire, and she did her superior officers credit. But there was that about the still babyish lines of her mouth which showed me that she longed to be away by herself and have a good cry. Drake couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Come on, Cecilia, let us go for a walk, too,” he suggested. And while I blessed him for his kindness I thought the “too” unfortunate.

When they were out of earshot I turned severely to Felicia.

“I don’t consider the Torture of the Innocents a pretty game,” I told her.

“Tell that to Lydia,” was all I got out of my wife.

“I thought Cecilia’s sister was a great friend of Lydia’s,” I asked.

“Exactly,” Felicia assented, dryly.

“For a spotless child of heaven, Cecilia’s playing the game pretty well,” I mused, as I watched her at dinner. During the hour of dressing she had pulled herself wonderfully together. She held her little round chin high in the air and devoted herself to Drake with all the aplomb of a Felicia.

The cup of bitterness held its touch of sweet to her. Even if one must suffer, one was out in the world, one was living, was what I read in her attitude. But as I have said, I don’t pretend to understand women; still, I’m much mistaken if, during dinner, at least, she didn’t have a good time.

She ignored Almington as much as she could in a general conversation.

“Mrs. Massingbyrd can have you,” her attitude seemed to say. “I fight for no man.”

I looked at Drake. If he wanted to keep his rose in the bud, he had better carry her away quickly to a fresher atmosphere.

At the end of dinner the ladies exchanged nods and smiles. I saw that an explanation was forthcoming for the mysterious visit to the stable.

They had been preparing what to me seemed not unlike a little amateur Walpurgisnacht.

It was, of course, Lydia Massingbyrd’s idea. Nobody else, not even Felicia, could have been wrong-minded enough to want to slide downhill in summer. My coachman’s children have a species of roller sled on which they daily endanger their lives by coasting down the steep macadamized road which leads from my house.

“I saw them on my way from the station,” proclaimed Mrs. Massingbyrd, triumphantly; “and saw at once their possibilities.”

“Will you steer me, Mr. Curtis?” asked Cecilia, turning her back on Almington, and giving poor Drake a killing glance; and I thought I surprised a glance of malicious intelligence pass between Mrs. Massingbyrd and my wife.

Now, I know that, told in plain words the morning after, most of our maddest fun seems flat and puerile enough. I know that a decent married man of my age and a lady killer of Almington’s ought to have poohpoohed this childish sport, and sat with our cigars and our whiskies and sodas on the piazza.

I suppose you think that’s what you would have done. But I can tell you, if you had dined with Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd, you’d have been caught up in the fire of their folly. It’s contagious, more than anything I know. In the glamour of their lovely nonsense sliding downhill on the coachman’s children’s roller sled would have seemed an appropriate and delightful thing—or sliding down the banister or the cellar door, if it had been their mad whim to do that.

Haven’t you ever been a kid since you were grown up? Did all your fooling stop before you were out of college? I’m sorry for you if it’s so. I hope, for my part, that Felicia and Mrs. Massingbyrd and their like will make me forget my years for a long time to come. And I hope often to wake up in the sober light of the next day wondering just what magic it was that had turned back the hand of time for me, that I could find merriment in sliding down a macadamized hill on a roller sled.

The night was cold, with a bit of a breeze; there was a moon, and the glow from Felicia’s gayety and Lydia Massingbyrd lasted my little companion on our first swift, delirious slides.

It wasn’t coasting, but it was exciting enough, as one went very fast. And coming up we piled into a cart to be drawn up the hill. But after a few slides the flame of my little friend’s gayety flickered out, and as the others were piling into the cart, “Let’s walk,” Cecilia suggested. Youth is ever selfish in its distress, and what did Cecilia care whether my legs were tired or not climbing that hill? Her little flock of conventions had come fluttering back to her. Her doll was sawdust, and there was a bad taste in her mouth.

Now, of course, you know that there’s nothing more revolting than the folly of others when you yourself are serious. Haven’t you been annoyed time and again by the senseless and meaningless good spirits of the people next door? I’m sure you have. And just as often you’ve felt a certain compassion for the people who give you sour looks and grim glances when you’re having the time of your life.

So it was with ever-increasing disapproval of my wife’s merriment and Mrs. Massingbyrd’s abandon that Cecilia walked up the hill with me.

“I think,” she confided to me, sadly, “I was born old!”

“There are some people who stay babies forever,” I encouraged her.

“They are the fortunate ones,” Cecilia said, gloomily. “I never have been able to enjoy things long at a time. Even our good times at school used to seem childish to me. And I thought when I came out and was among grown people——”

“That things would be different,” I supplemented. “And you find it’s just the same.”

“Just the same,” she agreed, in a gratified tone. “I feel as old as I did at school!”

“Some people are born with a realization of the futility of pleasure,” I went on, trying to voice Cecilia’s mood.

“I suppose it’s that,” she sighed. “When I was at school I thought of the world as a playground where I could amuse myself with the others.”

“And instead, you find that you’re only learning a different kind of lesson, and play is as uninteresting as ever?”

“Yes, it’s just like another kind of school, and the lessons harder to learn—and of less use when you’ve learned them!” There was a pathetic note in her voice.

“You’re very different from other girls, Miss Bennett,” I felt was an appropriate and comforting thing to say.

“I know I am, and it’s a great misfortune to be so,” she acknowledged, with becoming modesty.

“But it has its compensations.”

“It’s very lonely,” she said. “No one has ever understood all I think and feel. Mamma never has, nor the girls.”

“And since you’ve been out?”

“Since I’ve been out I met some one—once”—the once threw the time of meeting in the remote past—“some one I thought understood me—but I was disappointed.”

I murmured something sympathetic.

“Because I’m young in years people think I can’t see things,” she cried, with a little rising temper.

“You have the best possible vantage, then, to observe the world as it really is.”

“And I do see things as they really are, and many things!” and she clinched her little fists under cover of the darkness. Things were getting somewhat strenuous for me, so I brought our conversational boat to smoother waters.

“You make me think a little of Ellery Drake,” I said. (Machiavelli to the front!) “Because he seems so simple and direct; shallow people don’t take the trouble to understand him. But you’ve seen, of course——”

“Yes,” she assented; and I saw she was interested.

“What a lonely time he has of it, and under his apparent simplicity how much depth there is.”

“I’ve known him all my life—but I’ve never really known him—that is, what I call knowing a person.” There was a great deal of intensity in Cecilia’s voice. “Ah, how hard it is to really know any—and so few realize it.” The atmosphere was getting a little rarefied, so I was glad of the diversion caused by the two roller sleds whiffling by us.

“We’re racing,” called Mrs. Massingbyrd. “If we win, I’m to grant a boon to Jack Almington.”

“He’ll probably ask her to take down her hair,” said Machiavelli. “Men always do.”

“Oh, if that sort of thing amuses him”—contempt spoke in Cecilia’s tone—“let him have—his hank of hair!”

“There’s a remarkably happy man,” I said. “No still waters in his; a perfectly delightful fellow, only spoiled by women!”

“Is he?” asked Cecilia, indifferently.

“He’s been so immensely liked, you know, that what he really needs is a snub. He thinks he’s only to look at a woman for him to like her.”

“Wouldn’t one call that just a trifle conceited?” Cecilia’s voice dripped sarcasm.

“Not in his case,” I returned, cruelly. “For, you see, it’s generally so. I’ve never known a more fatal man than Almington.”

“He’s not always fatal,” Cecilia gave out, dryly; and she shut her little mouth with a firmness that even in the dim moonlight made itself visible.

We stood at the top of the hill in silence for a moment, waiting for the cart with the others in it. They came up laughing. How vain and empty their laughter was, I was sure Cecilia was thinking. Her deep knowledge of the world and its iniquity were fairly bowing down her young shoulders.

IV.

The laughter and nonsense grew louder, and I descried, standing upright in the cart, a vision, spirit or woman I couldn’t tell.

My companion stared a moment and then remarked:

“Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair has come down!” Into these simple words was packed all the quintessence of disapproval that Cecilia had learned from her various advisers. There were echoes of her mother’s shocked tones, haunting accents of her offended teacher, all welded together by the cool disapproval that was Cecilia’s own.

I am sure that if my delightful little guest could have heard the awful, the chilling, contempt of “Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair has come down,” she would have veiled her face with it in abject shame.

I gathered by her attitude and that of Felicia and Almington that these silly creatures were playing at tableaux, the cart serving as a Mi-carÊme char.

Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair, more miraculous than ever in the moonlight, fell down to her knees. Her eyes looked seraphically heavenward. Almington held her hand, kneeling before her, while Felicia, a little shawl disposed as drapery about her, was pointing dramatically out into the night, giving an admirable impersonation of those statuesque young ladies who, in tableaux, have no raison d’Être save to round out the composition and look pretty.

Later I learned that the name of this impressive tableau was: “The Triumph of Virtue.”

At that moment I was too occupied with the attitude of my little companion to pay attention to Mrs. Massingbyrd’s foolery.

Cecilia had just caught sight of Almington as he knelt, holding the hand of Virtue, his lean legs bent like the blade of a knife. Almington generally cuts a fine figure, through a certain sense of the fitness of things. His air of secret melancholy wins half his battles for him, and he is one of those men who must at any cost hang on to the last shred of dignity, as they are nothing without it. In his present situation I have no hesitation in saying he looked fatuous and grotesque.

How he came to lend himself to the crazy whim of the two girls I can’t tell. I suppose he was carried away by the flood of their high spirits, as many a wiser man has been before him and will be after him.

But if I had excuses for him, Cecilia had none.

It may be heartbreaking to have your first “serious young man” leave you at the smiles of a pretty widow with blond hair; but, after all, by showing how truly noble you are, you may some day crush your rival and bring your suitor to your knees, crying, “Peccavi!” It’s bad to learn he’s a heartbreaker, but, after all, then there’s all the more incentive to break his heart. You can, whatever happens, bear your suffering nobly, and at the worst you have lots of things, heaps simply, to tell the girls.

But to have your first hero of romance make himself ridiculous—that is the end of all things. Sorrow has then no dignity. A broken heart for a man like that is out of the question. Oh, it’s a bitter thing to think the drama of one’s life a tragedy and have it turn out a low comedy!

Cecilia saw her hero exactly as he was, at that moment, stripped of all adornment.

Glamour died, romance withered away; in the clear fire of her uncompromising young scorn.

She was proving again that man’s only unpardonable crime toward the woman who loves him is to make himself ridiculous.

It was really quite a dramatic little moment. The late hero, now turned mountebank, descended and helped out Felicia and Lydia, radiant in her white and gold attire—and it was only then I saw Drake, who had been sitting stiffly in the back of the cart.

He had taken no part in the pageant. If his temper was impaired, his dignity wasn’t. Sliding downhill was all right, his rigidity seemed to say, but no play acting in his. His mood and Cecilia’s jumped together. Her eyes met his. “I know you now,” her grateful glance seemed to say.

Meantime Mrs. Massingbyrd, lovely as an angel, drifted along the white road.

“It’s breaking the rules of the game,” Felicia said to her, “for you to have taken down your hair.”

“It fell down itself,” answered Lydia the unashamed.

“But you looked so entirely lovely,” my wife went on, “that I forgive you. It’s worth the price.”

And I guiltily hoped that Mrs. Massingbyrd would refrain from saying, “That’s exactly what Bobby said.”

She stood pensive a moment in the moonlight. Drake and Cecilia, drawn together by the feeling of superiority they shared in common—and which I had helped to point out—wandered off together. Almington was absorbed in an open and impertinent admiration of Mrs. Massingbyrd’s beauty, and Felicia and I gazed at her, and again Felicia said, approvingly: “It’s an unfair advantage to take—but it’s really worth it!”

Then the dreamy look in lovely Mrs. Massingbyrd’s eyes deepened, and she opened her lovely lips and said:

“Felicia, I’m so desperately hungry that I wouldn’t coast down that hill again—not for anything! Did you say you had something good for supper?”

“And at supper I shall ask my boon,” Almington answered.

“Boon?” said Mrs. Massingbyrd, as she watched Cecilia and Drake vanish together in the moonlight among the flowers. “Boon? You greedy person! Isn’t it boon enough to have seen me with my hair down by moonlight! I wonder at your graspingness, Jack Almington!”

After we had said good-night to our guests, after Cecilia and Drake had at last come in from an interminable talk on the piazza, after Mrs. Massingbyrd had stuffed herself—in the face of her ethereal loveliness I hate to use such a word, but I know no other; indeed, she applied herself to supper with such a fair, frank and honest appetite that she had neither eyes nor ears for Almington’s compliments—after all this was over, Felicia turned to me with a look of satisfaction.

“You played up nobly that time, Robert,” she said. “I’ve never known you to catch on so quickly and without a word from anyone.”

I gained time with remarking, pathetically, “You’ve always underrated my intelligence.”

“I call it a thoroughly artistic performance,” my wife said; “and the beauty of it is that there was no talk, no nothing, but each one doing his work.”

I looked at Felicia, to see if by any chance she was making a pitfall for me, but there was no danger signal. I thought it safe to give out, “I’m glad you liked my little share in it.”

“You were splendid,” she cried, cordially. “And if Miss Bennett only knew it, we deserve a vote of thanks from her.”

“Yes, don’t we?” I took care not to commit myself.

“It isn’t as if we hadn’t provided Cecilia with another suitor, and I’m sure Ellery Drake, from any point of view, is far more desirable than Almington.”

“I should say he was,” I cordially assented.

“And then, who can tell if Almington was really serious? And for a young girl to be affichÉe with Almington her first season is nothing short of tarnishing,” Felicia went on, virtuously.

“That’s what I’ve said from the beginning,” I put in.

“And you certainly played up nobly. We couldn’t have put it through so quickly without you,” my wife was generous enough to confess. “But did you ever see anything as splendid and self-sacrificing as Lydia?”

“Self-sacrificing?” I wondered, feeling my way.

“Why, she made herself odious—simply odious—in Cecilia’s eyes, so Cecilia would feel furious at having Almington like her.” Sometimes Felicia is anything but lucid.

“Like whom?” I naturally wanted to know.

“Like Lydia,” replied my wife, impatiently. “A girl can stand anything but having a man she likes fall in love with a woman she doesn’t. It’s queer,” she said, suspiciously, “clever as you are sometimes, how dense you are others. Did you understand——”

But at this late date I wasn’t going to have my laurels snatched from me. So I hastened to assure her. “Of course,” I said, loftily, “I understood Mrs. Massingbyrd intended to interfere!”