THE YOUNG MAN OF THE SEA
Diane was to learn that the infernal persistence of the Old Man of the
Sea of Arabian origin could find its match in youth. A week slipped
by. Philip wove an unsatisfactory mat of sedge upon a loom of cord and
stakes, whittled himself a knife and fork and spoon which he initialed
gorgeously with the dye of a boiled alder, invented a camp rake of
forked branches, made a broom of twigs, and sunk a candle in the floor
of his tent which he covered with a bottomless milk bottle. All in
all, he told Nero, he was evoluting rapidly into an excellent woodsman,
despite the peculiar appearance of the sedge mat.
When Diane was honestly indignant, Philip was quiet and industrious,
and accomplished a great deal with his knife and bits of wood. When,
finding his cheerful good humor irresistible, she was forced to fly the
flag of truce, he was profoundly grateful.
"When do you think you'll go?" demanded Diane pointedly one morning as
she deftly swung her line into the river. "Unless you contrive to get
stabbed again," she added doubtfully, "I really don't see what's
keeping you."
"When I may help you break camp and escort you back to your aunt,"
replied Philip pleasantly, "I'll pack up my two shirts and my wildwood
pipe and depart, exceedingly grateful for my stay in Arcadia."
Diane bit her lip and frowned.
"Suppose," she flashed, with angry scarlet in her cheeks, "suppose I
break camp and leave you behind!"
"I'll go with you," shrugged Philip. "Don't you remember? I told you
so before. And I'll sit on the rear steps of the van all the way to
Florida and play a tin whistle."
Appalled by the thought of the spectacular vagaries which this Young
Man of the Sea might develop if she took to the road, Diane said
nothing.
"No matter how I view you," she indignantly exclaimed a little later,
"you're a problem."
"Settle the problem," advised Philip. "It's simple enough."
"He'll go presently," she told herself resentfully. "He'll have to."
"How it amuses these fish to watch me murder worms!" exclaimed Philip
in deep disgust. "Look at the audience over there! I attract 'em and
you get 'em! Miss Westfall, are you a slave driver?"
"What do you mean?" asked Diane cautiously.
Philip's most innocent beginnings frequently led into argumentative
morasses for his opponent.
"Does Johnny have complete freedom in your camp?"
"Certainly!" exclaimed Diane warmly. "Johnny is old and faithful. He
may do as he pleases."
Philip changed an angemic worm of considerable transparency for one of
more interest to his river audience and smiled.
"Johnny," said he cheerfully, "has been good enough to invite me to
stay in camp with him indefinitely. I'm his guest, in fact, until you
go home. I imagine that as Johnny's guest I ought to enjoy immunity
from sarcastic shafts, but I may be mistaken. I've washed and drained
most of these worms. Will you lend me an inch or so of that stout
invertebrate climbing out of the can by you?"
Thoroughly out of patience, Diane reeled in her line and returned to
camp, whence she presently heard Philip blithely whistling a
fisherman's hornpipe and urging Nero to retrieve certain sticks he had
thrown into the river. A little later he caught a sunfish and swung
into camp with such a smile of irresistible pride and good humor on his
sun-browned face, that Diane laughed in spite of herself.
"How ridiculous it is!" she mused uncomfortably. "Here I may not
depart for fear a happy-go-lucky young man will play a tin whistle on
the steps of the van, and I will not go home. What in the world am I
to do with him? Are you an orphan?" she asked with guileful curiosity.
"No," said Philip.
"I'm sorry," said Diane maliciously. "For then I could take out papers
of adoption--"
"I'll stay without them," promised Philip. And Diane added wood to the
fire with cheeks like the scarlet sunset.
"I'm going to send for my aunt," she announced a few days later.
"Yes?" said Philip.
"Unconventionality of any sort shocks her dreadfully. Like as not
she'll faint dead away at the sight of you domiciled in my camp as if
you own it. She'll see that you go."
"Better not," advised Philip.
"Why?"
"I'll produce credentials proving I'm a reputable victim of
circumstances. I'll suggest that in complete concurrence with her I
deem it unsafe for a young and attractive girl to tour about the
country--and that I do not feel that I can conscientiously depart.
Between the two of us you'll likely have a most uncomfortable hour or
so."
Aunt Agatha was impressionable. It needed but a spark of concurrence
to arouse her dreadfully. Diane dismissed the project.
"I think," she said hopefully, "that you'll most likely go to-night."
"In any circumstances," said Philip easily, "I fear that would be
impossible. Johnny's behind with the laundry and I haven't a
collarable shirt." Whereupon he whistled for Nero and set off amiably
through the woods to gather an inaccessible flower he knew his lady
would prize.
By nine that night Diane was asleep in the van. Philip, with whom she
had indignantly crossed swords a little earlier, lay thoughtfully by
the fire watching the snowy curtains of the van windows billowing
lazily in the warm night wind. He felt restless and perturbed and
presently sought his tent, where he lit the bottled candle to look for
the predecessor of his insatiable wildwood pipe, but halted suddenly
with a peculiar whistle.
The silk shirt he had worn from Sherrill's lay conspicuously upon the
bed, washed and ironed and beautifully mended up the slashed sleeve and
along the shoulder. As a laundress of parts, Johnny was a jewel, but
he could not mend!
Now oddly enough as Mr. Poynter stared at the shirt upon the bed, his
appearance was that of a young man decidedly out of sorts. Presently
with an ominous glint of temper in his fine eyes, he noiselessly
rearranged his tent, viciously donned the offending shirt, whistled for
Nero and leaving the camp of his lady as unexpectedly as he had entered
it, set out for Sherrill's.
Even the most equable of tempers, it would seem, may now and then prove
crotchety.
And who may say? Mr. Poynter was a young man of infinite resource.
And there were other ways.