“There are times when it is excusable to call a spade a spade.”

“Well,” continued Durand, “if that femme starts in to talk such rot to Peggy it’s going to spoil everything.  Why, you never heard such confounded foolishness in all your life.”

“Come and walk on the terrace with me, laddie, and cool off both mentally and physically.  I know just how you feel and I wish I could see the way to ward off the inevitable—­at least that which intuition hints to be inevitable—­

“And that is?” asked Durand anxiously.

“Child, you have been like a son to me for two years.  Peggy has grown almost as dear to me as Polly.  I long to see that rare little girl blossom into a fine woman and she will if wisely guided, but with such a person as her aunt—­”

“You don’t for a moment think she will go and camp down at Severndale?” demanded Durand, stopping stock-still in consternation at the picture the words conjured up.

“I don’t know a thing!  Not one single thing, but I am gifted with an intuition which is positively painful at times,” and Mrs. Harold resumed her walk with a petulant little stamp.

Nor was her intuition at fault in the present instance.  In some respects Neil Stewart was as guileless and unsuspicious as a child, but Madam Stewart was far from guileless.  She was clever and designing to a degree, and before that conversation upon the Griswold piazza, ended she had so cleverly maneuvered that she had been invited to spend the month of September at Severndale, and that was all she wanted:  once her entering wedge was placed she was sure of her plans.  At least she always had been, and she saw no reason to anticipate failure now.

But she did not know Peggy Stewart.  She thought she had read at a glance the straightforward, modest little girl, but the real Peggy was not to be understood in the brief period of four hours.

Meanwhile, Peggy was blissfully unaware of her impending fate, and had almost dismissed Mrs. Stewart’s very existence from her thoughts.  She and Polly were dancing away the hours in all the joy of fifteen summers, and rumors of a wonderful plan were afloat for the following day.  This was no more nor less than a cutter race between the midshipmen of the Olympia and the Chicago.  For days the two crews had been practising and were only waiting for the big day to come and pass before holding their own contest.

The Chicago really had the picked men, most of them being the regular crew men, and while pulling in a cutter is a far cry from pulling in a shell, nevertheless, the work of trained men usually counts in the long run, and the boys and the Jackies had bet everything they owned, from their best shoes to a month’s pay, upon the victory of the Chicago’s crew.

But the Olympia boys “were lyin’ low, an’ playin’ sly.”  They had but one crew man in their cutter, but he was “a jim dandy,” being no less than Lowell, the stroke oar of the Navy crew, and a man who could “put more ginger into a boatload of fellows than any other in the outfit,” so his chums averred.