“She didn’t in the beginning,” Harry said, “She’s lame; it was an accident, but she can never be quite well again, so she took this up, as an amusement at first, but now it’s going to be her profession.”

Hilary bent over the photographs again.  “And you really think—­anyone could learn to do it?”

“No, not anyone; but I don’t see why the right sort of person couldn’t.”

“I wonder—­if I could develop into the right sort.”

“May I come and see what you have done—­and talk it over?” Harry asked.  “Since this friend of mine took it up, I’m ever so interested in camera work.”

“Indeed you may,” Hilary answered.  She had never thought of her camera holding such possibilities within it, of its growing into something better and more satisfying than a mere playmate of the moment.

“Rested?” Pauline asked, coming up.  “Supper’s nearly ready.”

“I wasn’t very tired.  Paul, come and look at these.”

Supper was served on the lawn; the pleasantest, most informal, of affairs, the presence of the older members of the party serving to turn the gay give and take of the young folks into deeper and wider channels, and Shirley’s frequent though involuntary—­“Do you remember, Senior?” calling out more than one vivid bit of travel, of description of places, known to most of them only through books.

Later, down on the lower end of the lawn, with the moon making a path of silver along the water, and the soft hush of the summer night over everything, Shirley brought out her guitar, singing for them strange folk-songs, picked up in her rambles with her father.  Afterwards, the whole party sang songs that they all knew, ending up at last with the club song.

“‘It’s a habit to be happy,’” the fresh young voices chorused, sending the tune far out across the lake; and presently, from a boat on its further side, it was whistled back to them.

“Who is it, I wonder?” Edna said,

“Give it up,” Tom answered.  “Someone who’s heard it—­there’ve been plenty of opportunities for folks to hear it.”

“Well it isn’t a bad gospel to scatter broadcast,” Bob remarked.

“And maybe it’s someone who doesn’t live about here, and he will go away taking our tune with him, for other people to catch up,” Hilary suggested.

“But if he only has the tune and not the words,” Josie objected, “what use will that be?”

“The spirit of the words is in the tune,” Pauline said.  “No one could whistle or sing it and stay grumpy.”

“They’d have to ’put the frown away awhile, and try a little sunny smile,’ wouldn’t they?” Patience observed.

Patience had been a model of behavior all the evening.  Mother would be sure to ask if she had been good, when they got home.  That was one of those aggravating questions that only time could relieve her from.  No one ever asked Paul, or Hilary, that—­when they’d been anywhere.