Laurel had lost none of the peculiar woodsy quality of her charm in the last four years. Her freckles had disappeared, however. (Stella had always maintained it was white vinegar and salt.) Her long curls had disappeared, too. Laurel did her hair up now. Rolled it into a simple knot behind. But the gray eyes with their changing moods from dark to light—like a lake beneath varying skies—were still the same. So was her grave listening manner—like trees on a windless night. She was still slight and sleek in body, too—as un-undulating as a low bas-relief when you draw your hand across its surface, but as possessed of lovely curves, too, and as suggestive of softness and warmth.

“Won’t you sit down?” Richard Grosvenor asked her, still holding her hands, though he knew she did not require steadying now. Richard had arranged the pillows so that Laurel would be facing him all the way up to Stag Island.

“Couldn’t I paddle, too?”

“Do you want to?”

“I’d like to.”

“Oh, all right.”

3

THEY WERE OFF ten minutes before the others. Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Grosvenor watched the pretty skiff, with Laurel in the bow and Richard in the stern, disappear like a lazy bird around a clump of trees.

“Richard seems quite taken by her,” remarked Mrs. Adams.

Mrs. Grosvenor smiled indulgently. “I can’t deny it.”

“Well, he certainly shows excellent taste. I think she is a lovely girl.”

“Yes, Richard has always been very discerning. I’ve often told him he’s really almost too particular—too fastidious about girls. This is his first serious affair since he has been in college as far as I know.”

“It really is, then, serious?”

“Oh, I couldn’t say that. It is obvious, that’s all. Laurel is only seventeen, you know—a mere child, though Richard, absurd boy, says she’s more like twenty in many ways than most girls he knows of twenty-two. It’s serious enough, you see, for him to want to talk about her to me. He confided to me yesterday he intends inviting her to the game in November and to Class Day next June. She was motoring with us yesterday afternoon and we discovered some mutual friends. It seems she visits at Mrs. Cornelius Morrison’s, you know, of New York and Long Island. I am on two charitable boards with Mrs. Morrison. She is a charming woman. Bob, my other son, is at St. Lee’s, with Mrs. Morrison’s oldest boy, Cornelius. They’re delightful people.”

4

IT WAS ABOUT an hour’s paddle to Stag Island, as the bird flies, but Richard guided the canoe along the irregular coastline, gliding through the dappled shadows of the beech and birch, of dogwood, and wild hydrangea, and occasional denser stretches of close-growing spruce and hemlock.