Part 66

It was a very lovely morning in early June.

As Mr. Carr handed her into the rowboat with ceremony she swept him a courtesy. Her apron and manners were charmingly incongruous.

When she was gracefully seated in the stern Mr. Carr turned for a moment, stared all Oyster Bay calmly in the face through his monocle, then, untying the painter, fairly skipped into the boat with a step distinctly frolicsome.

"It's curious how I feel about this," he observed, digging both oars into the water.

"How do you feel, Mr. Carr?"

"Like a bird," he said softly.

And the boat moved off gently through the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay.

At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently caressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates, in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and looked at Drusilla.

Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded over Cooper's Bluff.

"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from every point of view except looking down hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"

"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"

"Do you think that would help?"

"I think it helps--somehow."

Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over it. She looked at the pad on her knees.

After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't you?"

They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers, and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.

"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.

"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.

"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured Drusilla.

"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I am becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."

"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.

Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.

"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.

Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she said absently.

"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.

She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.

"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"

He was silent.