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."