Margaret Maynard was far from well, and Helen Wrapp had gone back home to her mother, and Bessy Bell had grown into a tall ravishingly beautiful girl and had distracted her mother by refusing a millionaire, and seemed very much in love with young Dalrymple.
“And I've the worst class of girls I ever had,” went on Miss Hill. “The one I had last year was a class of angels compared to what I have now. I reproved one girl whose mother wrote me that as long as Middleville had preachers like Doctor Wallace and teachers like myself there wasn't much chance of a girl being good. So I'm going to give up teaching.”
The little schoolmistress straightened up in her chair and looked severe. Colonel Pepper shifted uneasily, bent his glance for the hundredth time on his shiny shoes and once more had recourse to his huge handkerchief and heated brow.
“Well, Colonel, it seems good to see you once more,” put in Lane. “Tell me about yourself. How do you pass the time?”
“Same old story, Daren, same old way, a game of billiards now and then, and a little game of cards. But I'm more lonely than I used to be.”
“Why, you never were lonely!” exclaimed Lane.
“Oh, yes indeed I was, always,” protested the Colonel.
“A little game of cards,” mused Lane. “How well I remember! You used to have some pretty big games, too.”
“Er—yes—you see—once in a while, very seldom, just for fun,” he replied.
“How about your old weakness? Hope you've conquered that,” went on Lane, mercilessly.
The Colonel was thrown into utter confusion. And when Miss Hill turned terrible eyes upon him, poor Pepper looked as if he wanted to sink through the porch.
Lane took pity on him and carried him off to the garden and the river bank, where he became himself again.
They talked for a while, but neither mentioned the subject that had once drawn them together. For both of them a different life had begun.
A little while afterward Mel and Lane watched the bright figure and the slight dark one go up the hillside cityward.
“What do you know about that!” ejaculated Lane for the tenth time.
“Hush!” said Mel, and she touched his lips with a soft exquisite gesture.
At three o'clock one June afternoon Mel and Daren were lounging on a mossy bank that lined the shady side of a clear rapid-running brook. A canoe was pulled up on the grass below them. With an expression of utter content, Lane was leaning over the brook absorbed in the contemplation of a piece of thread which was tied to a crooked stick he held in his hand. He had gone back to his boyhood days. Just then the greatest happiness on earth was the outwitting of bright-sided minnows and golden flecked sunfish. Mel sat nearby with her lap full of flowers which she had gathered in the long grass and was now arranging. She was dressed in blue; a sunbonnet slipped back from her head; her glossy hair waved in the breeze. She looked as fresh as a violet.
“Well, Daren, we have spent four delightful, happy hours. How time flies! But it's growing late and we must go,” said Mel.
“Wait a minute or two,” replied Lane. “I'll catch this fellow. See him bite! He's cunning. He's taken my bait time and again, but I'll get him. There! See him run with the line. It's a big sunfish!”
“How do you know? You haven't seen him.”
“I can tell by the way he bites. Ha! I've got him now,” cried Lane, giving a quick jerk. There was a splash and he pulled out a squirming eel.
“Ugh! The nasty thing!” cried Mel, jumping up. Lane had flung the eel back on the bank and it just missed falling into Mel's lap. She screamed, and then when safely out of the way she laughed at the disgust in his face.
“So it was a big sunfish? My! What a disillusion! So much for a man's boastful knowledge.”
“Well, if it isn't a slimy old eel. There! be off with you; go back into the water,” said Lane, as he shook the eel free from the hook.
“Come, we must be starting.”
He pushed the canoe into the brook, helped Mel to a seat in the bow and shoved off. In some places the stream was only a few feet wide, but there was enough room and water for the light craft and it went skimming along. The brook turned through the woods and twisted through the meadows, sometimes lying cool and dark in the shade and again shining in the sunlight. Often Lane would have to duck his head to get under the alders and willows. Here in an overshadowed bend of the stream a heron rose lumbering from his weedy retreat and winged his slow flight away out of sight; a water wagtail, that cunning sentinel of the brooks, gave a startled
“Daren, please don't be so energetic,” said Mel, nervously.
“I'm strong as a horse now. I'm—hello! What's that?”
“I didn't hear anything.”
“I imagined I heard a laugh or shout.”
The stream was widening now as it neared its mouth. Lane was sending the canoe along swiftly with vigorous strokes. It passed under a water-gate, round a quick turn in the stream, where a bridge spanned it, and before Lane had a suspicion of anything unusual he was right upon a merry picnic party. There were young men and girls resting on the banks and several sitting on the bridge. Automobiles were parked back on the bank.
Lane swore under his breath. He recognized Margaret, Dick Swann and several other old-time acquaintances and friends of Mel's.
