Some five, ten, fifteen minutes later, the canoe, pushing its nose around a bit of wooded peninsula, came abruptly upon a deer standing upon the shore. Laurel made no exclamation at the sight of him, nor did she stop paddling or vary her stroke. She simply gazed in silent admiration for a second or two, then abruptly turned and looked back over her shoulder, to find out if her companion saw the beautiful creature too. Richard thought he had never seen anything so lovely, so blinding as Laurel’s eyes as they met his! He smiled, nodded. She turned back satisfied. Not a word was spoken, but sharing the deer that way was—well—“Look here,” said Richard a moment later, “haven’t you paddled enough? Come, won’t you please sit down here on the cushions and talk?”

She did finally.

“You’re different from any girl I ever knew.”

Most girls liked being told they were different. It seemed to distress Laurel.

“I try hard not to be.”

“Don’t try.”

Laurel had never been talked to by any boy like this before. She was at a loss to know how to banter back.

“Are you already booked for the game in November?” asked Richard.

“The game?”

“The big game, I mean. It’s in Cambridge this year.”

“Oh, no, no, I’m not,” Laurel’s heart fluttered. He meant the big Harvard-Yale game! Oh, how happy her mother would be!

“I want you to go with me.”

“Why, but I—do you think your mother—I mean—we—”

“I know,” he interrupted, “that we’ve known each other only a week, and all the rest of that silly conventional stuff. But I’m not a perfect stranger to you. You can tell your mother that my kid brother knows Con Morrison. He visited him once. Con has been at our house. Anyhow, when your mother is able to come downstairs, she’ll know us herself. It will be all right then. I simply had to get my word in now for fear you might get booked with somebody else. I want you to go to the game with me, if you go with anybody. Will you?”

“Yes, I will,” said Laurel, looking off toward the shore, her eyes again suddenly dark and luminous.

Richard looked toward the shore, too. Had she seen another deer?

When they landed at Stag Island half an hour later, “Don’t forget you’re going to paddle back with me, too,” Richard whispered.

5