It was a romantic situation; love has proverbially thriven in the atmosphere of a family feud.  The Baby felt this, but he felt also that he could not run the risk of being kicked out of the Syndicate.  The Baby did sums in a big hot bank all day; he had no dollars to spare, there was no other place upon the lake where he could afford to live, and he had a canoe of his own which his uncle had given him.  Hiawatha did not love the darling of his creation more than the Baby loved his cedar-wood canoe.  All this made him conceal carefully that mysterious sensation of unrestful delight which he experienced every time he saw Miss Helen Johns.  This, at least, in the first stage of his love-sickness.

Fate was hard; she led the Baby, all cheerful and unsuspecting, to spend an evening at a picnic tea in a wood a mile or more from the shore.  Mischievous Fate!  She led him to flirt frivolously until long after dark with a girl that he cared nothing at all about, and then whispered in his ear that he would get home the quicker if in the obscurity he ran across the Johns’ farm.  Fate, laughing in her sleeve, led him to pass with noiseless footsteps quite near the house itself; then she was content to leave him to his own devices, for through the open window he caught sight of Helen Johns doing her gymnastics.  Her figure was all aglow with the yellow lamplight; she was happy in the poetry of her motions and in the delight that the family circle took in watching them.  The Baby was in the dark and the falling dew; he was uncomfortable, for he had to stand on tiptoe, but nothing would have induced him to ease his strained attitude.  The pangs of a fierce discontent took possession of his breast.

Art was consulted in the gymnasium in which Miss Johns had studied; the theory was that only that which is beautiful is healthful.  Sometimes she poised herself on tiptoe with one arm waved toward heaven, an angel all ready, save the wings, for aerial flight.  Sometimes she seemed to hover above the ground like a running Mercury.  Sometimes she stood, a hand behind her ear, listening as a maid might who was flying from danger in some enchanted land.  Often she waved her hands slowly as if weaving a spell.

A spell was cast over the soul of the Baby; he held himself against the extreme edge of a verandah; his mouth remained open as if he were drinking in the beams from the bright interior and all the beautiful pictures that they brought with them.  It was only when the show was over that he noiselessly relaxed his strained muscles, and crept away over the dew-drenched grass, hiding under the shadow of maple boughs, guilty trespasser that he was.