“But why make you a prisoner, unless——­” She stopped suddenly and stared at me.

“He has claimed you!” she said.  “He is here, somwhere about this Place, and now, having had time to think it over, you do not Want to go to him.  Don’t deny it.  I see it in your face.  Oh, Bab, my heart aches for you.”

It sounded so like a play that I kept it up.  Alas, with what results!

“What else can I do, Jane?” I said.

“You can refuse, if you do not love him.  Oh Bab, I did not say it before, thinking you loved him.  But no man who wears clothes like those could ever win my heart.  At least, not permanently.”

Well, she did most of the talking.  She had finished the bath towle, which was a large size, after all, and monogramed, and she made me promise never to let my husband use it.  When she went away she left it with me, and I carried it out and put it on the rafters, with the other things—­I seemed to be getting more to hide every day.

Things went all wrong the next day.  Sis was in a bad temper, and as much as said I was flirting with Carter Brooks, although she never intends to marry him herself, owing to his not having money and never having asked her.

I spent the morning in fixing up a Studio in the boat-house, and felt better by noon.  I took two boards on trestles and made a desk, and brought a Dictionery and some pens and ink out.  I use a Dictionery because now and then I am uncertain how to spell a word.

Events now moved swiftly and terrably.  I did not do much work, being exhausted by my efforts to fix up the studio, and besides, feeling that nothing much was worth while when one’s Familey did not and never would understand.  At eleven o’clock Sis and Carter and Jane and some others went in bathing from our dock.  Jane called up to me, but I pretended not to hear.  They had a good time judging by the noise, although I should think Jane would cover her arms and neck in the water, being very thin.  Legs one can do nothing with, although I should think stripes going around would help.  But arms can have sleaves.

However—­the people next door went in to, and I thrilled to the core when Mr. Beecher left the bath-house and went down to the beech.  What a physic!  What shoulders, all brown and muscular!  And to think that, strong as they were, they wrote the tender Love seens of his plays.  Strong and tender—­what descriptive words they are!  It was then that I saw he had been vacinated twice.

To resume.  All the Pattens went in, and a new girl with them, in a One-peace Suit.  I do not deny that she was pretty.  I only say that she was not modest, and that the way she stood on the Patten’s dock and pozed for Mr. Beecher’s benafit was unecessary and well, not respectable.

She was nothing to me, nor I to her.  But I watched her closely.  I confess that I was interested in Mr. Beecher.  Why not?  He was a Public Character, and entitled to respect.  Nay, even to love.  But I maintain and will to my dying day, that such love is diferent from that ordinaraly born to the Other Sex, and a thing to be proud of.