LITMIR.BIZ

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giggled delightedly, and Miss Burridge, at the window, exclaimed:

      "There's Miss Wilbur now, Phil, looking at the garden bed."

      "If I were she," said Veronica, "I wouldn't have a word to say to you after the way you wasted last evening."

      "If only she thought so, too!" groaned Philip. "But I'm not in it with her astronomy map for June. She is a hundred times more interested to know where Jupiter and Venus are than where I am – natural, I suppose – all in the family." He threw open the kitchen door and, standing on the step, threw kisses toward the group within.

      "Good-bye, summer!" he sang. "Good-bye, good-bye."

      The beauty of his voice had its usual effect on Diana, who stood by the strip of green, growing things, looking in his direction, her lips slightly parted over her pretty teeth.

      "You see I'm good-bye-ing," he said, approaching her.

      "Are you leaving us?" she returned, allowing her clasped hands to fall apart. "See how well the sweet peas are doing."

      "Yes, I'm leaving you all in good shape. Do you think you can go on behaving yourselves without my watchful guardianship and Christian example?"

      "I think we shall miss you. Mr. Gayne is not a fair exchange."

      "Thank you. Mrs. Lowell was talking to me about that outfit last evening. She is quite stirred up about the boy."

      "Yes," rejoined Diana. "I think she is a wonderful woman. She has taken him down to the beach with her again this morning. She believes that Mr. Gayne is his nephew's enemy rather than his guardian. She believes he has some reason for desiring to blight any buddings of intelligence in the boy, and uses an outrageous method of suppression over him all the time. It would be so much easier to let it go, and most of us would, I'm sure, rather than spend vacation hours in such insipid company, or have any dealings with that – that impossible uncle; but Mrs. Lowell will not relinquish her efforts."

      "Yes, she is a brilliant, fearless sort of woman," said Philip. "I shouldn't wonder if she gave Gayne a disagreeable quarter of an hour before she gets through with him."

      "One has to exercise care, however," returned Diana, "lest the man become angered and visit his ill-humor on the boy. I am often obliged to constrain myself to civility when I yearn to hurl – " she hesitated.

      "Plates? Oh, do say you long to throw a plate at him!"

      Diana gave her remote moonbeam smile.

      "I must admit that 'invective' was in my mind. A rather strong word for girls to use."

      "A splendid word. A good long one, too. You might try hurling polysyllables at him some day and see him blink."

      Diana shook her head. "That sort of man is a pachyderm. He would never flinch at verbal missiles. Since you must go, I wish some other agreeable man would join our group and converse with him at table."

      Philip smiled. "Surely you have noticed that Miss Emerson is not averse to assuming all responsibility?"

      "Mr. Barrison," said Diana gravely, "I hope when I am – am elderly and unmarried, that I shall not seek to attract men."

      "Miss Wilbur," returned Philip, with a solemnity fitting hers, and regarding the symmetry and grace of her lovely head, "don't spend any time worrying about that; for some inner voice assures me that you will never be elderly and unmarried."

      "The future is on the knees of the gods," she returned serenely.

      "Then I don't need to lose any sleep on account of your posing for one of Mr. Gayne's wonderful sketches?"

      Diana brought the brown velvet of her eyes to bear fully upon him. It even seemed hopeful that a spark would glow in them.

      "I loathe the man," she said slowly.

      "Forgive me, divine one. Well, I must go now. Why won't you take me home? I should like you to meet my grandmother, and think of the pitfalls and mantraps of the island road if I risk myself alone: Bill Lindsay's Ford! Marley Hughes's bicycle! Lou Buell's gray mare taking him to mend somebody's broken pipe! Matt Blake's express wagon! Come and keep my courage up."

      "You have a grandmother on this island?"

      "I'll prove it if you'll come with me."

      Diana smiled and moved along beside him. "It doesn't seem a real, mundane, earthly place to me yet," she said. "It must be wonderful to have a solid pied-à-terre here. They tell me there are many summer cottages, but they are far from our Inn and I haven't realized them yet. I am hoping my parents will consent to purchasing some ground here for me."

      "Where do you usually go in summer?"

      "Our cottage is at Newport, but I like better Pittsfield, where we go in the autumn."

      Philip looked around at her as she moved along through the field beside him. "Is your middle name Biddle?" he asked.

      "No, I have no middle name."

      "I thought in Philadelphia only the descendants of the Biddles had cottages at Newport and Pittsfield."

      Diana smiled. "I know that is a stock bit of humor. What was that about an Englishman who said he had seen Niagara Falls and almost every other wonder of America except a Biddle? He had not yet seen one."

      "When do you laugh, Miss Wilbur?" asked Philip suddenly.

      "Why, whenever anything amuses me, of course."

      "Yet you like the island, although it has never amused you yet. I have lived in the house with you for two weeks and I haven't heard you laugh."

      Diana looked up at him and laughed softly. "How amusing!" she said.

      He nodded. "It's very good-looking, very. Do that again sometime. How did you happen to run away from family this season?"

      "I was tired and almost ill, and some people at home had been here and told me about it. So I came, really incontinently. I did not wait to perfect arrangements, and when I arrived in a severe rainstorm one evening, I found great kindness at the house my friends had told me of, but no clean towels. They were going to have a supply later, but meanwhile I lost my heart to the view from our Inn piazza and Miss Burridge found me there one day and took me in for better or for worse. That explains me. Now, what explains your having a grandmother here?"

      "Her daughter marrying my father, I imagine. My grandfather was a sea-captain, Cap'n Steve Dorking. He had given up the sea by the time I came along."

      "Here? Were you born here?"

      "Yes."

      "That explains the maritime tints in your eyes. Even when they laugh the sparkle is like the sun on the water. Continue, please."

      "Well, my father, who came here to fish, met my mother, fell in love, married her, and took her away. He was very clever at everything except making money, it seems, so my mother came home within a year to welcome me on to the planet. My grandfather had a small farm, and I was his shadow and one of his 'hands' until I was eight years old."

      "Was it a happy life?"

      "It was. I remember especially the smell of Grammy's buttery, sweet-smelling cookies, and gingerbread, and apple pies with cinnamon. It smells the same way now. Do you wonder I like to come back?"

      "You stimulate my appetite," said Diana.

      "Oh, she'll give you some. There were many jolly things in those days to brighten the life of a country boy. The way the soft grass felt to bare feet in the spring, and in the frosty autumn mornings when we went to the yard to milk and would scare up the cows so those same bare feet could stand in the warm place where the cows had lain. Then came winter and snowdrifts – making snow huts and coasting down the hills. Sliding and skating on the ice-filled hollows. It was all great. I'm glad I had it."

      "You test my credulity, Mr. Barrison, when you speak of ice and snow in this poetic home of summer breezes."

      He looked down at her. "We will have a winter house-party at Grammy's sometime and convince you."

      "So at eight years of age you went out into the world?"

      "Yes, at

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