Early the next morning Colonel Meredith and his cousin Bob Jonstone
presented themselves at the office dressed for walking. Butter would not
have melted in their mouths.
"Can you come now and help us pick out a site for the tent?" asked the
youthful colonel.
Maud was rather busy that morning, but she closed her ledger, selected a
walking-stick, and smiled her willingness to aid them.
"It will seem more like real camping-out," said Mr. Jonstone, "if we
don't pitch our tent right in the midst of things. Suppose we take a
boat and row along the shores of the lake, keeping our eyes peeled."
Maud was not averse to going for a row with two handsome and agreeable
young men. They selected a guide boat and insisted on helping her in and
cautioning her about sitting in the middle. Maud had almost literally
been brought up in a guide boat, but she only smiled discreetly. The
cousins matched for places. As Maud sat in the stern with a paddle for
steering, Colonel Meredith, who won the toss, elected to row stroke. Bob
Jonstone climbed with gingerness and melancholy into the bow. Not only
was he a long way from that beautiful girl, but Meredith's head and
shoulders almost completely blanketed his view of her.
"We ought to row English style," he said.
"What is English style, and why ought we to row that way?"
"In the American shells," explained Jonstone, "the men sit in the
middle. In the English shells each man sits as far from his rowlock as
possible."
"Why?" asked Meredith, who understood his cousin's predicament
perfectly.
"So's to get more leverage," explained Jonstone darkly.
"It's for Miss Darling to say," said Meredith. "Which style do you
prefer, Miss Darling, English or American?"
"I think the American will be more comfortable for you both and safer
for us all," said she.
"There!" exclaimed the man of war, "what did I tell you?"
"But--" continued Maud.
"I could have told you there would be a 'but,'" interrupted Jonstone
triumphantly.
"But," repeated Maud, "I'm coxswain, and I want to see what every man in
my boat is doing."
So they rowed English style.
"It's like a dinner-party," explained Maud to Colonel Meredith, who
appeared slightly discomforted. "Don't you know how annoying it is when
there's a tall centrepiece and you can't see who's across the table from
you?"
"Even if you don't want to look at him when you have found out who he
is," agreed Meredith. "Exactly."
They came to a bold headland of granite crowned with a half-dozen old
pines that leaned waterward.
"That's rather a wonderful site, I think," said Maud.
"Where?" said the gentlemen, turning to look over their shoulders. Then,
"It looks well enough from the water," said Jonstone, "but we ought not
to choose wildly."
"Let us land," said Colonel Meredith, "and explore."
They landed and began at once to find reasons for pitching the tent on
the promontory and reasons for not pitching it.
"The site is open and airy," said Jonstone.
"It is," said Colonel Meredith. "But, in case of a southwest gale, our
tent would be blown inside out."
A moment later, "How about drinking-water?" asked the experienced
military man.
"I regret to say that I have just stepped into a likely spring," said
Jonstone.
"We must sit down and wait till it clears."
When the spring once more bubbled clean and undefiled Mr. Jonstone
scooped up two palmfuls of water and drank.
"Delicious!" he cried.
Colonel Meredith then sampled the spring and shook his head darkly.
"This spring has a main attribute of drinking-water," he said; "it is
wet. Otherwise----"
"What's the matter with my spring?" demanded his cousin.
"Silica, my dear fellow--silica. And you know very well that silica to a
man of your inherited tendencies spells gout."
Jonstone nodded gravely.
"I'm afraid that settles it." And he turned to Maud Darling. "I can keep
clear of gout," he explained, "only just as long as I keep my system
free from silica."
"Do you usually manage to?" asked Maud, very much puzzled.
"So far," he said, "I have _always_ managed to."
"Then you have never suffered from gout?"
"Never. But now, having drunk at this spring, I have reason to fear the
worst. It will take at least a week to get that one drink out of my
system."
And so they passed from the promontory with the pine-trees to a little
cove with a sandy beach, from this to a wooded island not much bigger
than a tennis-court. In every suggested site Jonstone found
multitudinous charms and advantages, while Colonel Meredith, from the
depths of his military experience, produced objections of the first
water. For to be as long as possible in the company of that beautiful
girl was the end which both sought.
Maud had gone upon the expedition in good faith, but when its true
object dawned upon her she was not in the least displeased. The very
obvious worship which the Carolinians had for her beauty was not so
personal as to make her uncomfortable. It was rather the worship of two
artists for art itself than for a particular masterpiece. Of the six
beautiful Darlings Maud had had the least experience of young men. She
was given to fits of shyness which passed with some as reserve, with
others as a kind of common-sense and matter-of-fact way of looking at
life. The triplets, young as they were, surpassed the other three in
conquests and experience. And this was not because they were more lovely
and more charming but because they had been a little spoiled by their
father and brought into the limelight before their time. Furthermore,
with the exception of Phyllis, perhaps, they were maidens of action to
whom there was no recourse in books or reflection. Such accomplishments
as drawing and music had not been forced upon them. They could not have
made a living teaching school. But Lee and Gay certainly could have
taught the young idea how to shoot, how to throw a fly, and how to come
in out of the wet when no house was handy. As for Phyllis, she would
have been as like them as one pea is like two others but for the fact
that at the age of two she had succeeded in letting off a 45-90 rifle
which some fool had left about loaded and had thereby frightened her
early sporting promises to death. But it was only of weapons, squirming
fish, boats, and thunder storms that she was shy. Young gentlemen had no
terrors for her, and she preferred the stupidest of these to the
cleverest of books.
Mary, Maud, and Eve had wasted a great part of their young lives upon
education. They could play the piano pretty well (you couldn't tell
which was playing); they sang charmingly; they knew French and German;
they could spell English, and even speak it correctly, a power which
they had sometimes found occasion to exercise when in the company of
foreign diplomatists. The change in their case from girlhood to young
womanhood had been sudden and prearranged: in each case a tremendous
ball upon a given date. The triplets had never "come out."
If Lee or Gay had been the victim of the present conspiracy, the
gentlemen from Carolina would have found their hands full and
overflowing. They would have been teased and misconstrued within an inch
of their lives; but Maud Darling was genuinely moved by the candor and
chivalry of their combined attentions. There was a genuine joyousness in
her heart, and she did not care whether they got her home in time for
lunch or not. And it was only a strong sense of duty which caused her to
point out the high position attained by the sun in the heavens.
With reluctance the trio gave up the hopeless search for a camp site and
started for home upon a long diagonal across the lake. It was just then,
as if a signal had been given, that the whole surface of the lake became
ruffled as when a piece of blue velvet is rubbed the wrong way, and a
strong wind began to blow in Maud's face and upon the backs of the
rowers.
Several hours of steady rowing had had its effect upon unaccustomed
hands. It was now necessary to pull strongly, and blisters grew swiftly
from small beginnings and burst in the palms of the Carolinians. Maud
came to their rescue with her steering paddle, but the wind, bent upon
having sport with them, sounded a higher note, and the guide boat no
longer seemed quick to the least propulsion and light on the water, but
as if blunt forward, high to the winds, and half full of stones. She did
not run between strokes but came to dead stops, and sometimes, during
strong gusts, actually appeared to lose ground.
The surface of the lake didn't as yet testify truly to the full strength
of the wind. But soon the little waves grew taller, the intervals
between them wider, and their crests began to be blown from them in
white spray. The heavens darkened more and more, and to the northeast
the sky-line was gradually blotted out as if by soft gray smoke.
"We're going to have rain," said Maud, "and we're going to have fog. So
we'd better hurry a little."
"Hurry?" thought the Carolinians sadly. And they redoubled their
efforts, with the result that they began to catch crabs.
"Some one ought to see us and send a launch," said Maud.
At that moment, as the wind flattens a field of wheat to the ground, the
waves bent and lay down before a veritable blast of black rain. It would
have taken more than human strength to hold the guide boat to her
course. Maud paddled desperately for a quarter of a minute and gave up.
The boat swung sharply on her keel, rocked dangerously, and, once more
light and sentient, a creature of life, made off bounding before the
gale.
"We are very sorry," said the Carolinians, "but the skin is all off our
hands, and at the best we are indifferent boatmen."
"The point is this," said Maud: "Can you swim?"
"I can," said Colonel Meredith, "but I am extremely sorry to confess
that my cousin's aquatic education has been neglected. Where he lives
every pool contains crocodiles, leeches, snapping-turtles, and
water-moccasins, and the incentive to bathing for pleasure is slight."
"Don't worry about me," said Mr. Jonstone. "I can cling to the boat
until the millennium."
"We shan't upset--probably," said Maud. "It will be better if you two
sit in the bottom of the boat. I'll try to steer and hold her steady.
This isn't the first time I've been blown off shore and then on shore. I
suppose I ought to apologize for the weather, but it really isn't my
fault. Who would have thought this morning that we were in for a storm?"
"If only you don't mind," said Colonel Meredith. "It's all _our_ fault.
You probably didn't want to come. You just came to be friendly and kind,
and now you are hungry and wet to the skin----"
"But," interrupted Bob Jonstone, "if only you will forget all that and
think what pleasure we are having."
"I can't hear what you say," called Maud.
"I beg your pardon," shouted Mr. Jonstone. "I didn't quite catch that.
What did Miss Darling say, Mel?"
"She said she wanted to talk to me and for you to shut up."
Mr. Jonstone made a playful but powerful swing at his cousin, and the
guide boat, as if suddenly tired of her passengers, calmly upset and
spilled them out.
A moment later the true gallantry of Mr. Bob Jonstone showed forth in
glorious colors. Having risen to the surface and made good his hold upon
the overturned boat, he proposed very humbly, as amends for causing the
accident, to let go and drown.
"If you do," said Maud, excitement overcoming her sense of the
ridiculous, "I'll never speak to you again."
Colonel Meredith opened his mouth to laugh and closed it a little
hastily on about a pint of water.