Jane, in her joy over Lucy’s home-coming, and in her desire to meet her sister’s every wish, gladly welcomed the new arrivals, although Miss Collins, strange to say, had not made a very good impression upon her.  Max she thought better of.  He was a quiet, well-bred young fellow; older than either Lucy or Maria, and having lived abroad a year, knew something of the outside world.  Moreover, their families had always been intimate in the old days, his ancestral home being always open to Jane’s mother when a girl.

The arrival of these two strangers only added to the general gayety.  Picnics were planned to the woods back of Warehold to which the young people of the town were invited, and in which Billy Tatham with his team took a prominent part.  Sailing and fishing parties outside of Barnegat were gotten up; dances were held in the old parlor, and even tableaux were arranged under Max’s artistic guidance.  In one of these Maria wore a Spanish costume fashioned out of a white lace shawl belonging to Jane’s grand-mother draped over her head and shoulders, and made the more bewitching by a red japonica fixed in her hair, and Lucy appeared as a dairy-maid decked out in one of Martha’s caps, altered to fit her shapely head.

The village itself was greatly stirred.

“Have you seen them two fly-up-the-creeks?” Billy Tatham, the stage-driver, asked of Uncle Ephraim Tipple as he was driving him down to the boat-landing.

“No, what do they look like?”

“The He-one had on a two-inch hat with a green ribbon and wore a white bob-tail coat that ’bout reached to the top o’ his pants.  Looks like he lived on water-crackers and milk, his skin’s that white.  The She-one had a set o’ hoops on her big as a circus tent.  Much as I could do to git her in the ’bus —­as it was, she come in sideways.  And her trunk!  Well, it oughter been on wheels—­one o’ them travellin’ houses.  I thought one spell I’d take the old plug out the shafts and hook on to it and git it up that-a-way.”

“Some of Lucy’s chums, I guess,” chuckled Uncle Ephraim.  “Miss Jane told me they were coming.  How long are they going to stay?”

“Dunno.  Till they git fed up and fattened, maybe.  If they was mine I’d have killin’ time to-day.”

Ann Gossaway and some of her cronies also gave free rein to their tongues.

“Learned them tricks at a finishin’ school, did they?” broke out the dressmaker. (Lucy had been the only young woman in Warehold who had ever enjoyed that privilege.) “Wearin’ each other’s hats, rollin’ round in the sand, and hollerin’ so you could hear ’em clear to the lighthouse.  If I had my way I’d finish ’em, And that’s where they’ll git if they don’t mind, and quick, too!”

The Dellenbaughs, Cromartins, and Bunsbys, being of another class, viewed the young couple’s visit in a different light.  “Mr. Feilding has such nice hands and wears such lovely cravats,” the younger Miss Cromartin said, and “Miss Collins is too sweet for anything.”  Prim Mr. Bunsby, having superior notions of life and deportment, only shook his head.  He looked for more dignity, he said; but then this Byronic young man had not been invited to any of the outings.