Allan Whittredge unfolded the County News and glanced over it, then laid it on his knee and gazed across the lawn with a thoughtful frown.  The County News presented no problems, but life in this quiet village of Friendship did.  His talk with Miss Betty had brought him face to face with them.  He was conscious now that his attitude had been one of complacent superiority.  He had held himself above the pettiness of village life only to discover, as he admitted frankly, that he had been a conceited fool.

His own indignation helped him to realize something of what Celia must have felt at the cruel affront to her father.  And his silence all this while made him seem a party to it.  It was an intolerable thought, but Allan was not one to brood over difficulties; a gleam of what Miss Betty called the Barnwell stubbornness shone in his eyes as he made an inward vow to find some way to convince Celia of his ignorance of much which had happened at the time of his father’s death, and to gain from his mother an admission of her mistake.  The question how to accomplish this, filled him with a helpless impatience.

He took up the book that lay beside him and opened it.  “The secret of the Forest:  Good in everything,” he read.  “To remember the secret of the Forest, to bear hard things bravely—­” He turned the leaves and saw under Morgan’s straggling characters the once familiar writing of Celia Fair,—­the firm, delicate backhand, so suggestive, to one who knew her, of the determination that lay beneath her gentleness.  Did Celia believe there was good in everything?  Surely not in all this trouble.  Yet she was bearing hard things bravely, if all he heard were true.  It hurt him to think of her carrying a load of responsibility and care.  His own life seemed tame from its very lack of care.

He closed the book with decision.  His task was to unravel these twisted threads of hatred and misunderstanding, and he would do it.

Meanwhile, he found time for other things.  He began to cultivate the society of the Arden Foresters, and to be a boy again in earnest.

Boating on the picturesque little river was one of the pleasures of Friendship.  Jack Parton and his brothers owned a boat, the Mermaid; and Allan now provided himself with one, which he delighted Rosalind by naming for her.  After this the Mermaid and the Rosalind might frequently be seen following the narrow stream in its winding course, making their way among water lilies and yellow and purple spatter-dock, between banks fringed with willows and wild oats and here and there a dump of cat-tails.  What pleasanter way than this of spending the early summer mornings?  And then to find some shady anchorage, where lunch could be eaten and the hours fleeted away merrily until the cool of the afternoon.

With only three in each boat, it was light work for the oarsman; and as rowing was something Maurice could do, and as the girls liked to take their turn, it often happened that Mr. Whittredge had nothing to do but enjoy himself.