LAUREL SAT ON the end of the pier with her feet swinging over the edge. A girl about her own age sat on each side of her. Their arms were thrown lightly around her shoulders, and hers lightly around theirs. All three of the girls were in white, except for their Boutet de Monvel colored sweaters—pale pink, pale yellow, and faintest lavender. The three girls made as pretty a display against the gray-blue of the lake as a fragment of rainbow. Beneath their swinging feet floated a flotilla of canoes, their bright red and green sides flashing in the sun. On the pier behind the girls was a collection of boxes, leather-encased thermos-bottles and jars, and several tea-baskets.

The three girls were waiting for “the crowd” to assemble. The crowd was going on a picnic to Stag Island today. Laurel was one of the crowd.

Laurel was seventeen years old now, and this was the first time in all her life she had ever been one of a crowd. The thrilling experience had lasted for ten days. It would be three weeks the day after tomorrow since Laurel and her mother had arrived at this unexpected Paradise.

Laurel was keenly conscious of the careless arms about her shoulders, but she didn’t show it. Laurel could conceal joy and pride, she discovered, quite as successfully as disappointment and chagrin. She was keenly conscious, too, of the girl she had always been before on occasions of this sort, as she had strolled by just such intimate little groups as she now miraculously found herself one of, she and her mother taking in what details of exciting preparations as they could, in a glance or two, or covert backward look. Laurel felt sorrier for that girl on this happy morning, she thought, than she ever had before.

Now, down the long pier that stretched out into the lake from the lawn in front of the hotel drifted other fragments of rainbow, other groups of two and three girls with arms linked; and among them occasionally a boy or two—tanned, lean, loose-knit, tough-muscled, dressed in light trousers and soft shirts—typical American college boys. There was a whole rollicking bunch of them behind the last trio of girls. By the time the crowd had all collected, the pier was as noisy as an ivy-covered wall full of sparrows on the first sunny day of spring.

Laurel and the two girls beside her jumped up and joined the general chatter. Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Grosvenor, the two chaperones for the day’s festivities, leisurely approaching the bevy could catch bits and snatches of characteristic conversations.

“Gorgeous day! Good-looking sweater, my dear! One exactly like it in henna. Last one in the dining-room—perfectly stunning! Absolutely! Crazy about that color.”

Laurel didn’t contribute much to the staccatoed exclamations, but her eyes shone, and her cheeks were bright.