“A woman-hater?” she repeated.  “Is he really?”

“He is.”  Mr. Brown neglected to add that he also had declared himself a member of the same fraternity.  Perhaps he thought it was not necessary.

“A woman-hater!” Miss Graham fairly bubbled with mischievous joy.  “Oh, jolly! now I’m crazy to meet him!”

The assistant moved toward the hall door.  “Very good!” he observed with grim determination.  “I think he’ll cure your lunacy.”

His hand was outstretched toward the latch, when the young lady spoke again.

“Wait a minute,” she said.  “Perhaps I had better not wake him now.”

“Just as you say.  The pleasure is—­or will be—­entirely mine, I assure you.”

“No—­o.  On the whole, I think I’ll wait until later.  I may call again.  Good morning.”

She moved across the threshold.  Then, standing on the mica slab which was the step to the kitchen door, she turned to say: 

“You didn’t swim yesterday.”

“No—­o.  I—­I was busy.”

“I see.”

She paused, as if expecting him to say something further on the subject.  He was silent.  Her manner changed.

“Good morning,” she said, coldly, and walked off.  The assistant watched her as she descended the path to the cove, but she did not once look back.  Brown threw himself into a chair.  He had never hated anyone as thoroughly as he hated himself at the moment.

“What a cheerful liar she must think I am,” he reflected.  “She caught me in that fool yarn about meeting her brother here last summer; and now, after deliberately promising to teach her that stroke, I don’t go near her.  What a miserable liar she must think I am!  And I guess I am.  By George, I can’t be such a cad.  I’ve got to make good somehow.  I must give her one lesson.  I must.”

The tide served for bathing about three that afternoon.  At ten minutes before that hour the substitute assistant keeper of Eastboro Twin-Lights tiptoed silently to the bedroom of his superior and peeped in.  Seth was snoring peacefully.  Brown stealthily withdrew.  At three, precisely, he emerged from the boathouse on the wharf, clad in his bathing suit.

Fifteen minutes after three, Seth Atkins, in his stocking feet and with suspicion in his eye, crept along the path to the edge of the bluff.  Crouching behind a convenient sand dune he raised his head and peered over it.

Below him was the cove, its pleasant waters a smooth, deep blue, streaked and bordered with pale green.  But the water itself did not interest Seth.  In that water was his helper, John Brown, of nowhere in particular, John Brown, the hater of females, busily engaged in teaching a young woman to swim.

Atkins watched this animated picture for some minutes.  Then, carefully crawling back up to the path until he was well out of possible sight from the cove, he rose to his feet, raised both hands, and shook their clenched fists above his head.