Part 7

"Well, try it. It will make you warmer than the fire would. Afterward we will play 'Paddy cake, Paddy cake,' and 'Bean Porridge hot.'"

"Do men in danger always carry on the way you do?" asked Phyllis.

"Always," he answered.

"I can understand trying to be funny during a cavalry charge, or while falling off a cliff," said Phyllis, "but not while slowly and miserably congealing."

"You are not a Bostonian," said Herring. "Half the inhabitants of that municipality freeze to death and the others burn."

"I've stayed in Boston," said Phyllis, "and the only difference that I could see between it and other places was that the people were more agreeable and things were done in better taste. And what gardens!"

"Ever seen the Arboretum?"

"Have I?"

"In lilac time?"

"Mm!"

She was on her favorite topic. She forgot that she was cold, wet, miserable, and a frightful anxiety to her family.

"But why be an innkeeper?" asked Herring. "Why not set up as a landscape-gardener?"

"I don't know enough. But I've often thought----"

"I've got five hundred acres outside of Boston that I'd like to turn you loose on."

"You speak as if I were a goat."

"The first thing to do is to drain the swamps. Now, I'll make you a proposition. I can't put it in writing, because it's too dark to see and I have no writing materials, but there is nothing fishy about us Herrings. You to landscape my place for me, cause a suitable house to be built, and so forth; I to pay you a thousand dollars a month, and a five per cent commission on the total expenditure."

"And what might _that_ amount to?"

"What you please," said Herring politely.

"Who says Bostonians are cold?" exclaimed Phyllis. And there began to float through her head lovely visions of landscapes of her own making.

"You're still joking, aren't you?" she said after a while.

"I don't know landscapes well enough to joke about them," he said.

"But I can't design a house!"

"Oh, you will have architects to do that part. You just pick the general type."

"What kind of a house do you want?"

"It depends on what kind of a house _you_ want."

"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "what fun it would be!"

"Will you do it?"

She was tempted beyond her strength.

"Yes," she said, and began to talk with irresponsible delight and enthusiasm.

"Ah," thought Herring to himself, "find out what really interests a girl and she'll forget all her troubles."

It began suddenly to grow light.

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Phyllis. "The woods must be on fire! Oh, the poor trees!"

"It isn't fire," said Herring, "it's the moon--'Queen and huntress, chaste and fair--goddess excellently bright'--was ever such luck! I hoped we were going to stand here cosily all night talking about marigolds and cowslips and wallpapers, and now it's our duty to move on. Come, Goody Two Shoes, Policeman Moon has told us to move on. I shall never forget this spot. And I shan't ever be able to find it again."

They toiled forward a little way, and lo! upon a sudden, they came to firm and rocky land that sloped abruptly upward from the swamp. They climbed for several hundred feet and came out upon a bare hilltop, from which could be seen billows of forest and one great horn of Half Moon Lake, silver in the moonlight.

"Why, it isn't a mile to camp," said Phyllis. She swayed a little, tottered, rocked backward and then forward, and fell against Herring's breast in a dead faint.

In a few moments she came to and found that she was being carried in strong arms. It was a novel, delicious, and restful sensation--one which it seemed immensely sensible to prolong. She did not, then, immediately open her eyes.

She heard a voice cheerful, but very much out of breath, murmuring over her:

"New experience. Never carried girl before. Experience worth repeating. Like 'em old-fashioned--like Great-grandmother Saltonstall. Like 'em to faint."

A few minutes later, "Where am I?" said Phyllis.

"In my arms," said Herring phlegmatically, as if that was one of her habitual residing places.

"Put me down, please."

"I hear," said he, "and I obey with extreme reluctance. I made a bet with myself that I could carry you all the way. And now I shall never know. Feel better?"

"Mm," she said, and "What a nuisance I've been all through! But it was pretty bad, some of it, wasn't it?"

"Already you are beginning to take pleasure in remembering. What did I tell you? Don't be frightened. I am going to shout."

He shouted in a voice of thunder, and before the echo came back to them another voice, loud and excited, rose in the forest. And they heard smashings and crashings, as a wild bull tearing through brittle bushes. And presently Sam Langham burst out of the thicket with a shower of twigs and pine-needles.

His delight was not to be measured in words. He apostrophized himself.

"Good old Sam!" he said. "He knew you weren't drowned in the brook. He knew it would be just like Herring to want to cross that swamp. As soon as I heard somebody say that it was impassable, I said: 'Where is the other side? That's the place to look for them.' But why didn't you make more noise?"

"Oh," said Herring, "we were so busy talking and exploring and doing things that had never been done before that it never occurred to us to shout."

"Herring," said Langham sternly, "you have the makings of a hero, but not, I am afraid, of a woodsman."

"Well, we're safe enough now," said Herring. "Excuse me a moment----"

"Excuse you! What?"

"It's very silly--been sick you know--over-exertion--think better faint and get it over with."

Langham knelt and lifted Herring's head.

"You lift his feet," he said to Phyllis, "send the blood to his heart; bring him to."

Herring began to come out of his faint.

"This young man," said Langham, "may be something of an ass, but he's got sand."

"He carried me a long way," said Phyllis, the tears racing down her cheeks; "and he's only just over typhoid, and he never stopped being cheerful and gallant, and he _isn't_ an ass!"

Herring came to, but was not able to stand. He had kept up as long as he had to, and now there was no more strength in him.

Phyllis accepted the loan of Langham's coat.

"I'll stay with him," she said, "while you go for help."

The moment Langham's back was turned she spread the coat over Herring.

"_Please--don't!_" he said.

"You be quiet," said she sharply. "How do you feel?"

"Pretty well used up, thank you. Hope you'll 'scuse me for this collapse. Shan't happen again. Lucky thing you and I don't both collapse same moment."

A faint moan was wrung from him. She touched his cheek with her hand. It was hot as fire. She was an old-fashioned girl, and the instinct of nursing was strong in her.

She was an old-fashioned girl. There had almost always been a young man in her life about whom, for a while, she wove more or less intensely romantic fancies. They came; they went. But almost always there was one.

She raised her lovely face and looked at the moon, and made an unspoken confession. There had always been one. Well, now there was another!

XVI

When the real season opened, you might have thought that the whole venture was Mr. Sam Langham's and that he had risked the whole of his money in it. Without being officious, he had words of anxious advice for the Darlings, severally and collectively. His early breakfasts in Smoke House with Mary, the chef beaming upon the efficient and friendly pair, lost something of their free and easy social quality, and became opportunities for the gravest discussions of ways and means.

The opening day would see every spare room in the place occupied--by a man. To Mary it seemed a little curious that so few women, so few families, and so many bachelors had applied for rooms. But to Sam Langham the reasons for this were clear and definite.

"It was the picture in the first issues of your advertisement that did it. I only compliment and felicitate you when I say that every bachelor who saw that picture must have made up his mind to come here if he possibly could. And that every woman who saw it must have felt that she could spend a happier summer somewhere else. Now, if you had circulated a picture of half a dozen men, each as good-looking as your brother Arthur, the results would have been just the opposite."

"Women aren't such idiots about other women's looks as you think they are," said Mary.

"I didn't say they were idiots; I intimated that they were sensible. The prettiest woman at a summer resort always has a good time--not the best, necessarily, but very good. Now, no woman could look at that picture of you and your sisters and expect to be considered the prettiest woman _here_. Could she, Chef?"

Chef laughed a loud, scornful, defiant, gesticulant, Gallic laugh. His good-natured features focussed into a scathing Parisian sneer; he turned a delicate omelette over in the air and said, "Lala!"

"There are," continued Mr. Langham, "only half a dozen women in the world who can compare in looks with you and your sisters. There's the Princess Oducalchi--your mother. There's the Countess of Kingston, Mrs. Waring, Miss Virginia Clark--but these merely compare. They don't compete."

Mr. Langham tried to look very sly and wicked, and he sang in a humming voice: "Oh, to be a Mussulman, now that spring is here."

"Coffee?" said Mary.

"Please."

"Well," said she, as she poured, "the whys and wherefores don't matter. It's to be a bachelor resort--that seems definitely settled. But I think we had better send the triplets away. I don't want the Pritchard and Herring episodes repeated while my nerves are in this present state. And there's Lee--if she isn't leading Renier into one folly after another, I don't know what she is doing. They seem to think that keeping an inn is a mere excuse for flirtation."

"Don't send them away," said Langham. "If you sent those three girls to a place where there weren't any men at all--they'd flirt with their shadows. Better have 'em flirting where you can watch 'em than where you can't. And besides--are you quite sure that the Pritchard and Herring episodes were mere flirtations? Day before yesterday I came upon Miss Gay by accident; she was practising casting."

"That's how she spends half her time."

"But she was practising with Pritchard's rod! Yesterday I came upon her in the same place----"

"By accident?" smiled Mary.

"By design," he said honestly. "And this time she wasn't casting. She had the rod lying across her knees, and her eyes were turned dreamily toward the bluest and most distant mountain-top."

"'Why do you look at that mountain?' I said.

"'Because it's blue, too,' said she.

"'And what makes you blue?' I asked.

"'The same cause that makes the mountain blue,' said she.

"'Hum,' said I. 'Then it must be distance.'

"'Something like that,' she said. 'I sometimes think I'm the most distant person in the world.'

"'You're probably not the only person who thinks that!' said I.

"And she said, 'No? Really?' And that was all I could get out of her. Except that, just as I was walking away, I heard a sharp whistling sound and my cap--my new plaid cap--was suddenly tweaked from the top of my head and hung in a tree. She must have practised a lot with that rod of Pritchard's. It was a beautiful cast----"

"She might have put your eye out!" exclaimed Mary.

"She hung the apple of my eye in a tree," said he dolefully. "You know that one with the green and brown? And last night it rained."

"I hope she expressed sorrow," said Mary.

"She was going to, but I got laughing and then she did."

"What a dear you are!" exclaimed Mary. "And so you think she's making herself mournful over Mr. Pritchard? And what are the reasons for thinking that Phyllis is serious about Mr. Herring?"

"He's sent for blue-prints of his property outside Boston, and they are busy with plans for landscaping it. Narrow escape that! I didn't let on; but the second day I thought he was a goner. I did."

Mary sighed.

"We might just as well have called it a matrimonial agency in the first place instead of an inn."

Mr. Langham rose reluctantly.

"I have an engagement with Miss Maud," he explained.

The faintest ripple of disappointment flitted across Mary's forehead.

"I've promised to help her with her books," said he. "Some of the journal entries puzzle her; and she has an idea that The Inn ought to have more capital. And we are going into that, too."

"I hope," said Mary, "that you aren't going to lend us money without consulting me."

Chef was in a distant corner, quite out of ear-shot. And Mr. Langham, emboldened by one of the most delicious breakfasts he had ever eaten, shot an arch glance at Miss Darling.

"I wouldn't consult you about lending money," he said; "I wouldn't consult you about giving money. But any time you'll let me consult you about _sharing_ money----"

Panic overtook him, and he turned and fled. But upon Mary's brow was no longer any ripple of disappointment--only the unbroken alabaster of smooth serenity. She reached for the household keys and said to herself:

"Maud is a steady girl--even if the rest of us aren't."

She caught a glimpse of herself in the bottom of a highly polished copper utensil and couldn't help being pleased with what she saw.

On the way to the office Mr. Langham fell in with Arthur. This one, Uncas scolding and chatting upon his shoulder, was starting off for a day's botanizing--or dreaming maybe.

"Arthur--one moment, please," said Langham. "As the head of the family I want to consult you about something."

"Yes?" said Arthur sweetly. "Of course, Uncas, you are too noisy." And he put the offended little beast into his green collecting case.

"I never would have come here," said Mr. Langham, "if it hadn't been for that advertisement."

Arthur frowned slightly.

"You mean----"

"Yes. But I came," said Mr. Langham, "not as a pagan Turk but as a Christian gentleman. I was just about to take passage for Liverpool when I saw your sister Mary looking out at me from _The Four Seasons_. And so I wrote to ask if I could come here. I have lived well, but I am not disappointed. I am very rich----"

"My dear Sam," said Arthur, "you are the best fellow in the world. What do you want of me?"

"To know that you think I'd try my best to make a girl happy if she'd let me."

"A girl?" smiled Arthur. "_Any_ girl?"

"In all the world," said Mr. Langham, "there is only one girl."

"If I were you," said Arthur, "I'd ask her what _she_ thought about it."

Langham assumed a look of terrible gloom.

"If she didn't think well of it I'd want to cut my throat. I'd rather keep on living in blissful uncertainty, but I wanted _you_ to know--_why_ I am here, and _why_ I want to stay on and on."

"Why, I'm very glad to know," said Arthur, "but surely it's your own affair."

Mr. Langham shook his head.

"Last night," said he, "I was dozing on my little piazza. Who should row by at a distance but Miss Gay and Miss Lee. You know how sounds carry through an Adirondack night? Miss Lee said to Miss Gay: 'I tell you he doesn't. Not _really_. He's just a male flirt.' 'A butterfly,' said Miss Gay."

"But how do you know they were referring to you?"

"By the way the blessed young things laughed at the word '_butterfly_'. So I wanted you to know that my intentions are tragically serious, no matter what others may say. Whatever I may be, and I have been insulted more than once about my figure and my habits, I am _not_ a flirt. I am just as romantic as if I was a living skeleton."

Here Arthur's head went back, and he laughed till the tears came. And Mr. Langham couldn't help laughing, too.

A few moments later he was going over The Inn books with Maud Darling and displaying for her edification an astonishing knowledge of entries and a truly magical facility in figuring. Suddenly, apropos of something not in the least germane, he said:

"Miss Maud, when in your opinion is the most opportune time for a man to propose to a girl?"

"When he's got her alone," said she promptly, "and has just been dazzling her with a display of his erudition and understanding."

And she, whom Mary had described as the one steady sister in the lot, flung him a melting and piercing glance. But Mr. Langham was not deceived.

"I ask you an academic question," he said, "and you give me an absolutely cradle-snatching answer. I may _look_ easy, Miss Maud, but there are people who will protect me."

"The best time to propose to a girl? You really want to know? I thought you were just starting one of your jokes."

"If I am," said he, "the joke will be on me. But I _really_ want to know."

"The best moment," said she, "is that moment in which she learns that one of her friends or one of her sisters younger than she is engaged to be married. When an unengaged girl hears of another girl's engagement she has a momentary panic, during which she is helpless and defenseless. That is my best judgment, Mr. Sam Langham. And the older the girl the greater the panic. And now I've betrayed my sex. In fact, I have told you absolutely all that is definitely known about girls."

Just outside the office he met Gay.

"Halloo!" she said.

He only made signs at her and flapped his arms up and down.

"_They_ can't talk," he said.

"Who can't talk?"

He held her with a stern glance, and if the word had been hissable, would have hissed it.

"Butterflies," he said.

Then Miss Gay turned the color of a scarlet maple in the fall of the year. Then she squealed and ran.

XVII

"Are we all here?" asked Mary.

She had summoned her sisters and Arthur to the office for a conference.

"All except Sam Langham," said Gay.

"I didn't know that he was one of the family," said Mary.

"Of course, you _know_," said Gay; "you would. _I_ was just guessing."

"Well, he isn't," said Mary, trying not to change color or to enjoy being teased about Mr. Langham.

The triplets sat in a row upon a bench made of little birch logs with the bark on. It was not soft sitting, as Lee whispered, but one had one's back to the light, and in case one had done something wrong without knowing it and was in for a scolding, that would prove an immense advantage.

"What I wanted to say," said Mary, "is just this----"

She stood up and looked rather more at the triplets than any one else, so that Lee exclaimed, "Votes for women," and Gay echoed her with, "Yes, but none for poor little girls in their teens."

"Hitherto," continued the orator, "The Inn has been only informally open. It's been more like having a few friends stopping with us. We had to see more or less of them. But after to-day there will be a crowd, and I think it would be more dignified and pleasanter for them if _some_ of us kept ourselves a little more to ourselves. What do _you_ think, Arthur?"

Arthur looked up sweetly. It was evident that he had not been listening.

"Why, Mary," he said, "I think it might be managed with infinite patience."

The triplets giggled; Maud and Eve exchanged amused looks.

"Arthur," said Mary, "you can make one contribution to this discussion if you want to. You can tell us what you are really thinking about, so that we needn't waste time trying to guess."

"Why," said he gently, "you know I have quite a knack with animals, taming them and training them, and I was wondering if it would be possible to train a snail. _That's_ what I was thinking about. I have a couple in my pocket at the moment, and----"

"Never mind _now_," said Mary hurriedly, and she turned to the triplets. "What do _you_ think of what I said?"

"I think it was tortuous and involved," said Lee, "and that it would hardly bear repetition."

"It smacked of paternalism," said Gay. And even Phyllis, her mind upon the convalescing Herring, was moved to speak.

"You said it would be more dignified for some of us to keep to ourselves. Perhaps it would. You said it would be pleasanter for the people who are coming here to stay. I doubt it!"

"Bully for you, old girl," shouted Lee and Gay; "sick her!"

Mary moaned. She was proof against their hostilities, but the language in which they were couched pierced her to the marrow.

"I am sure," she said, "that Maud and Eve will agree with me."

"Of course," said Eve.

"Naturally," said Maud.

"There!" exclaimed Mary, with evident triumph.

"We agree," said Eve, "that _some_ of us should keep ourselves more to ourselves."

And she looked sternly at the triplets. But then she turned and looked sternly at Mary and rose to her feet.

"We think," she said with a _j'accuse_ intonation, "that those who haven't kept themselves to themselves should, and that those who have--shouldn't. Maud and I, for instance, haven't the slightest objection to being fetched for and carried for by attractive young men. Have we, Maud? But hitherto, as must have been obvious to the veriest nincompoop, we have done our own fetching and carrying."

There was a short silence. Mary blushed. Arthur fidgeted. He was wondering if snails preferred the human voice or whistling.

"I'm quite sure," said Maud, "that I haven't been wandering over the hills with future earls, or lost in swamps with interesting invalids, or basked morning after morning in the sunny smile of a gourmet----"

Mary paled under this attack.

"Mr. Langham is altogether different," she said.

"Oh, quite!" cried Lee.

"Utterly, absolutely different!" cried Gay. "To begin with, he's richer; and to end with, he's fatter."

"I shouldn't have said 'fat,'" said Lee. "I should have said 'well-larded,' but then I am something of a stylist."

"Sam Langham," said Mary, "is everybody's friend. And he's an immense help in lots of ways; and then he has a certain definite interest in The Inn. Because, if we need it, he's going to lend us money to carry our accounts."

Gay whispered to Lee behind her hand. Lee giggled.

"What was that?" asked Mary sharply.

"Only a quotation."

"What quotation?"

"Oh, Gay just said something about 'Bought and Paid For.'"

Here Arthur interrupted.

"They're like snails," said he to Mary. "You can only train 'em with infinite patience."

Phyllis rose suddenly and became the cynosure of all eyes except her own, whose particular cynosure at the moment was the floor. She moved toward the door.

"Where are you off to?" asked Mary.

"I'm just going to speak to Chef."

"What about?"

"About some chicken broth."

"For yourself?"

The gentle Phyllis was being goaded beyond endurance. At the door she turned and lifted her great eyes to Mary's.

"No," she said bitterly; "it's for Arthur's snails."

There was a silence.

"If there's any voting," said Phyllis, "I give my proxy to Gay." And she vanished through the door.

"I'm sure," said Mary, "I don't know what the modern young girl is coming to!"

"I know where _that_ one is going to," said Gay; "spilling the chicken broth in her unseemly haste."

Then Arthur spoke.

"The modern young girl," he said, "is coming to just where her grandmother came, and by the same road. Girls will be girls. So let's be thankful that the men who have come here so far have been--men. And hopeful that those who are to come will be also. I've lived too much with nature not to know what's natural--when I see it."

"Do you think," said Gay sweetly, "that it's natural for a man to eat as much as Sam Langham does?"

"As natural under the peculiar circumstances," said Arthur, "as it is for you to tease."

Lee rose.

"And you?" said Mary, smiling at last.

"Oh," said Lee witheringly, "I have an engagement to carve initials surrounded by a heart on a birch-tree."

And when Lee had gone Gay spoke up.

"I shouldn't wonder," said she, "if, by way of a blind, the baggage had told the truth."

"We should never have called it The Inn," said Mary; "we should have called it The Matrimonial Agency."

"Every pretty girl," said Arthur, "is a matrimonial agency."