“As for Mr. Philip Poynter,” reflected Diane with delicate disdain, as she bent over the fire and rolled some baked potatoes away with a stick, “what can one expect?  Men are exceedingly peculiar and inconsistent and impudent.  I haven’t the ghost of a doubt that he found that ridiculous shirt and went off in a huff.  And I’m very glad he did—­very glad indeed.  I meant he should, though I didn’t suppose with his unconscionable nerve it would bother him in the least.  If a man’s sufficiently erratic to blow a tin whistle all the way to Florida—­as Philip certainly is—­and maroon himself on somebody else’s lake for fear he’d miss an acquaintance, he’d very likely fly into a rage when one least expected it and go tramping off in the night.  I do dislike people who fall into huffs about nothing.”

Diane burned her fingers again, felt that the fire was unnecessarily hot upon her face, and indignantly resigning the preparation of breakfast to Johnny, went fishing.

“He should have gone long ago,” mused Diane, flinging her line with considerable force into the river.  “It’s a great mercy as it is that Aunt Agatha didn’t appear and weep all over the camp about him.  I’m sorry I mended the shirt.  Not but that I was fortunate to find something that would make him go, but a shirt’s such a childish thing to fuss about.  And, anyway, I preferred him to leave in a friendly, conventional sort of way!”

There are times, alas, when even fish are perverse!  Thoroughly out of patience, Diane presently unjointed her rod, emptied the can of worms upon the bank, and returned to camp, where she found Johnny industriously piling up a heap of litter.

“What are you going to do with these?” demanded Diane, indicating an eccentric woodland broom and a rake of forked twigs and twine.  “Throw them out?”

Johnny nodded.

“Well, I guess you’re not!” sniffed Diane indignantly.  “They’re mighty convenient.  That rake is really clever.”

Johnny’s round eyes showed his astonishment.  He had heard his perverse young mistress malign these inventions of Philip’s most cruelly.

Then what a woodland commotion arose after breakfast!  What a cautious stamping out of fire and razing of tents!  What a startled flutter of birds above and bugs below!  What an excited barking on the part of Rex, who after loafing industriously for a week or so, felt called upon to sprint about and assist his mistress with a dirt-brown nose!  What a trampling of horses and a creaking of wheels as the great green wagon wound slowly through the shadowy forest road and took to the open highway with Rex at His mistress’s feet haughtily inspecting the wayside.

And what a wayside, to be sure!  Past fields of young rye from which a lazy silver smoke seemed to rise and follow the wind-billowing grain; past fields of dark red clover rife with the whir and clatter of mowing machines as the farmers felled the velvety stalks for clover hay; past snug white farmhouses where perfumed peonies drooped sleepily over brick walks; on over a rustic bridge, skirting now a tiny village whose church spire loomed above the trees; now following a road which lay rough and deeply rutted, among golden fields of buttercups fringed with bunch grass.