For the friendship between Diane and the handsome minstrel was steadily growing.  By what subtle hints, by what ingenuous bursts of confidence, by what bewildering flashes of inherent magnetism he contrived to cement it, who may say?  But surely his romantic resources like his irresistible charm of speech and manner, were varied.  A rare flower, an original and highly commendable bit of woodland verse, some luxury of fruit or camping device, in a hundred delicate ways he contrived to make the girl his debtor, talking much in his grave and courtly way of the gratitude he owed her.  Adroitly then this romantic minstrel spun his shining, varicolored web, linking them together as sympathetic nomads of the summer road; adroitly too he banned Philip, who by reason of a growing and mysterious habit of sleeping by day had gained for himself a blighting reputation of callous indifference to the charm of the beautiful rolling country all around them.

“I’m exceedingly sorry,” read a scroll of birch bark which Ras drowsily delivered to Diane one sunset, “but I’ll have to ask you to invite me to supper.  Ras bought an unhappy can of something or other behind in the village and it exploded.

“Philip.”

“If I refuse,” Diane wrote on the back, “you’ll come anyway.  You always do.  Why write?  Will you contribute enough hay for a cushion?  Johnny’s making a new one for Rex.”

It was one of the vexing problems of Diane’s nomadic life, just how to treat Mr. Philip Poynter.  It was increasingly difficult to ignore or quarrel with him—­for his memory was too alarmingly porous to cherish a grudge or resentment.  When a man has had a bump upon his only head, held Mr. Poynter, things are apt to slip away from him.  Wherefore one may pardon him if after repeated commands to go home, and certain frost-bitten truths about officious young men, he somehow forgot and reappeared in the camp of the enemy in radiant good humor.

Philip presently arrived with a generous layer of hay under his arm and a flour bag of tomatoes.

“Hello,” he called warmly.  “Isn’t the sunset bully!  It even woke old Ras up and he’s blinking and grumbling like fury.”  Mr. Poynter fell to chatting pleasantly, meanwhile removing from his clothing certain wisps of hay.

“You’re always getting into hay or getting out of it!” accused Diane.

Philip admitted with regret that this might be so and Diane stared hopelessly at his immaculate linen.  Heaven alone knew by what ingenuity Mr. Poynter, handicapped by the peculiar limitations of a hay-camp, contrived to manage his wardrobe.  What mysterious toilet paraphernalia lay beneath the hay, what occasional laundry chores Ras did by brook and river, what purchases Mr. Poynter made in every village, and finally what an endless trail of shirts and cuffs and collars lay behind him, doomed, like the cheese and buns, as he feelingly put it, to one-night stands, only Ras and Philip knew; but certainly the hay-nomad combined the minimum of effort with the maximum of efficiency to the marvel of all who beheld him.  Ras’s problem was infinitely simpler.  He never changed.  There was much of the original load of hay, Philip said, dispersed about his ears and pockets and fringing the back of his neck.