Thoroughly out of patience, Diane reeled in her line and returned to camp, whence she presently heard Philip blithely whistling a fisherman’s hornpipe and urging Nero to retrieve certain sticks he had thrown into the river.  A little later he caught a sunfish and swung into camp with such a smile of irresistible pride and good humor on his sun-browned face, that Diane laughed in spite of herself.

“How ridiculous it is!” she mused uncomfortably.  “Here I may not depart for fear a happy-go-lucky young man will play a tin whistle on the steps of the van, and I will not go home.  What in the world am I to do with him?  Are you an orphan?” she asked with guileful curiosity.

“No,” said Philip.

“I’m sorry,” said Diane maliciously.  “For then I could take out papers of adoption—­”

“I’ll stay without them,” promised Philip.  And Diane added wood to the fire with cheeks like the scarlet sunset.

“I’m going to send for my aunt,” she announced a few days later.

“Yes?” said Philip.

“Unconventionality of any sort shocks her dreadfully.  Like as not she’ll faint dead away at the sight of you domiciled in my camp as if you own it.  She’ll see that you go.”

“Better not,” advised Philip.

“Why?”

“I’ll produce credentials proving I’m a reputable victim of circumstances.  I’ll suggest that in complete concurrence with her I deem it unsafe for a young and attractive girl to tour about the country—­and that I do not feel that I can conscientiously depart.  Between the two of us you’ll likely have a most uncomfortable hour or so.”

Aunt Agatha was impressionable.  It needed but a spark of concurrence to arouse her dreadfully.  Diane dismissed the project.

“I think,” she said hopefully, “that you’ll most likely go to-night.”

“In any circumstances,” said Philip easily, “I fear that would be impossible.  Johnny’s behind with the laundry and I haven’t a collarable shirt.”  Whereupon he whistled for Nero and set off amiably through the woods to gather an inaccessible flower he knew his lady would prize.

By nine that night Diane was asleep in the van.  Philip, with whom she had indignantly crossed swords a little earlier, lay thoughtfully by the fire watching the snowy curtains of the van windows billowing lazily in the warm night wind.  He felt restless and perturbed and presently sought his tent, where he lit the bottled candle to look for the predecessor of his insatiable wildwood pipe, but halted suddenly with a peculiar whistle.

The silk shirt he had worn from Sherrill’s lay conspicuously upon the bed, washed and ironed and beautifully mended up the slashed sleeve and along the shoulder.  As a laundress of parts, Johnny was a jewel, but he could not mend!

Now oddly enough as Mr. Poynter stared at the shirt upon the bed, his appearance was that of a young man decidedly out of sorts.  Presently with an ominous glint of temper in his fine eyes, he noiselessly rearranged his tent, viciously donned the offending shirt, whistled for Nero and leaving the camp of his lady as unexpectedly as he had entered it, set out for Sherrill’s.