Half an hour before the time set for the rendezvous at the summer-house that night Jeff and Just walked down the path, shoulder to shoulder, talking under their breath.  Just, being younger, was even more deeply interested than his brother in the prospective encounter, and received his final instructions with ill-concealed glee.

“All right!” he gurgled.  “I’m to give him a good scare, in the shape of a lecture—­with a thrashing promised if he cuts up any more.  He’s to give his word, on pain of a lot of things, not to give any of this little performance of his away to a soul.  Then he’s to be forbidden the premises while Miss Peyton is on them.  I understand.”

“Well, now, look here,” warned Jeff.  “I give you leave, but, mind you, I trust your discretion, too.  You never can tell what these Willie-boys will do.  Dignity’s your cue.  Be stern as an avenging fate, but don’t get to cuffing him round and batting him with language just because you’re bigger.  You——­”

“Look here,” expostulated Just, aggrieved, “you picked me out for this job; now leave it to me.  I’ll have the boy saying ‘sir’ to me before I get through.”

Just ran down to the boat-house, got out a slim craft, launched it, and was about rowing away when he bethought himself of something.  He pulled in to the landing, made fast his painter, and ran like a deer up to the house.  He was back in five minutes.

“Don’t believe I’ll go by boat, after all,” he whispered to Jeff, standing in the summer-house door.  “It might be simpler not to have a boat to bother with.  I’ll just leave the Butterfly tied there, and put her up when I get back.”

He was off before Jeff could reply.  Jeff started toward the boat to put it up, but stopped, considering.

Lucy would think it that of her admirer, and would be all the more sure to keep her appointment.  He left it as it was, swinging lightly on the water, six feet out.  It was a habit of Just’s to moor a boat at the length of her painter, to prevent her bumping against the rough old landing.

Lucy, coming swiftly down the path fifteen minutes later, saw the boat and hastened her steps.  She did not observe that this was a slimmer, longer craft than the boat George Jarvis was using.  She reached the landing and looked about.  Of course he was in the summer-house.  She went to it, her skirts, which she had of late been surreptitiously lengthening, held daintily in her hand.

As she came close, a figure appeared in the doorway.  Before she could be frightened by the realisation that it was not Jarvis’s slender young frame which confronted her, Jeff accosted her in the mildest tones imaginable: 

“It’s only Jefferson Birch.  Don’t be scared.  Fine night, isn’t it?”

“Y-yes,” stammered Lucy, in dismay.  She stood still, her skirts gathered close, as if she were about to run.

“Don’t go.  Out for a stroll?  So am I,” said Jeff, pleasantly, as if midnight promenades were the accustomed thing at “The Banks.”  “Won’t you sit down?”