At Aunt Caroline’s earnest request she had taken Yorick with her.  “For,” said Aunt Caroline, “I refuse to receive guests with that bird within hearing distance.  The things he says are bad enough but I have a feeling that he knows many things which he hasn’t said yet.  And people are sensitive.  Only the other day when old Mrs. Burton was calling him ‘Pretty Pol,’ he burst into that dreadful laugh of his and told her to ‘Shake a leg’!  How the creature happened to know about the scandal of her early youth I can’t say.  But it is quite true that she did dance on the stage.  She grew quite purple when that wretched bird threw it up to her.”

Desire had laughed and promised to sequestrate Yorick for the afternoon.  He had taken the insult badly and was now muttering protests to himself with throaty noises which exploded occasionally in bursts of bitter laughter.

It was too early to dress for another hour but already the dress lay ready on the bed.  Desire had chosen it with care.  She had no wedding-dress.  Bridal white would have seemed—­well, dangerously near the humorous.  She would have feared that half-smile with which Spence was wont to appreciate life’s pleasantries.  But the gown upon the bed was the last word in smartness and charm.  In color it was like pale sunlight through green water.  It was both cool and bright.  Against it, her warm, white skin glowed warmer and whiter; her leaf-brown hair showed more softly brown.  Its skirt was daintily short and beneath it would show green stockings that shimmered, and slippers that were vanity.

Desire sat in the window seat and allowed herself to be quite happy.  “If I could just sit here forever,” she mused.  “If someone could enchant me, just as I am, with the sun warm on the tips of my toes and this little wind, so full of flowers, cool upon my face.  If I need never again hear anything save the drone of sleepy bees, the chirping of fat robins and the hum of a lawn-mower—­”

She sat up suddenly.  Who could be mowing the west lawn in the heat of the day?  Desire, forgetting about the enchantment, leaned out to see.  Surely it couldn’t be?  And yet it certainly was.  The lawn-mower man displayed the heated countenance of the bridegroom him-self.

“What is he thinking of?” groaned Desire.  “He will make himself a rag—­a perfect rag.  I wonder Aunt Caroline allows it.”

But Aunt Caroline was presumably occupied elsewhere.  No one came to prevent the ragmaking of the professor, and Desire, after watching for a moment, raised her finger and gave the little searching call which had been their way of finding each other in the woods at Friendly Bay.

The professor stopped instantly, leaving the lawn-mower exactly where it was, in the middle of a swath.  With an answering wave he crossed to the west room window and, with an ease which surprised his audience, drew his long slimness up the pillar of the porch and clambered over the railing into the small balcony.