AFTER LUNCH UNDER the tall pines on Stag Island the boys went off to explore the coast; and the girls (after the tea-baskets were repacked and the pine-needle bank made as neat and clean as the inside of a pine chest) grouped themselves in colorful bunches on the soft brown background, and producing gay work-bags, began plying various tools—knitting-needles, crochet hooks, and tatting-bobbins; conversing the while lazily, meanderingly, breaking into shrill peals of laughter, now and then, or fragments of popular songs.

Laurel lay back, flat on the ground, idle, her hands folded under her head, and gazed up at the murmuring tops of the trees. She wished her mother might be hiding up there among the needles, gazing down at her through the gaps, seeing, hearing.

Deborah, seated beside Laurel, was tickling her nose with a spear of field grass, Laurel attempting to catch it in her mouth by occasional puppy-like snaps. Frances on the other side was amusing herself by weaving pine needles through the meshes of Laurel’s sweater. “I’ll pay you back, somehow,” purred Laurel contentedly.

Now they were telling her about the theatricals they gave every year in August, discussing what sort of a rôle would be best suited to her; now describing the delights of the night she would spend on the top of Spear Mountain before the season was over; now commanding her to make herself useful and sit up and help wind some yarn.

Oh, was it all true? Did they like her a little? Were they her friends? It seemed to Laurel that afternoon, as the shadows grew longer on the western margin of the lake and the hour for the homeward paddle with Richard Grosvenor through those shadows, approached, that her cup of happiness was full to the brim.

7

AT THE END of the homeward paddle it seemed to her that that cup was overflowing. Richard had asked her to be his partner in the tennis tournament on Saturday; he had asked her to go to lunch at a neighboring hotel with his mother and himself tomorrow noon; he had asked her to come out alone with him, in the canoe, tonight after dinner, when the moon rose; he had asked if he might write to her after he returned to town. He was going back in four days. He had taken a job in his father’s office for the rest of the summer.

As they had drawn near to the pier in front of the hotel, he had said to Laurel, interrupting his paddling as he did so, leaning forward, “It doesn’t seem possible that I met you only a week ago” (oh, it was the beginning of the old, old story). “You seem to me like somebody I’ve known a long while” (told in the old, old way).