Laurel closed her eyes a moment—he didn’t see her—then opened them wide. She had a feeling she might wake any moment and find it all a dream.

As she jumped out of the canoe on to the pier beside him, a look passed between them that was like the look when they had shared the deer silently together. For the third or fourth time that day Laurel’s heart fluttered and seemed almost to turn over.

Several of the crowd were on the pier when Laurel and Richard arrived. Deborah called out brightly to them, “Come along, walk up with us.”

She linked a free arm familiarly through Laurel’s as she approached, and Richard fell into step on Laurel’s other side. Frances and two boys were also with the group. They all moved up the pier together. The girls began singing a popular song. Then suddenly in the midst of the chorus, Deborah stopped singing, stopped walking, too. So did the others.

“Oh girls! Look!” she exclaimed. “There is that woman!”

Laurel glanced up. Coming down across the lawn in front of the hotel approaching the pier, she saw her mother.

8

STELLA WAS SEVERAL hundred yards away, but Laurel was familiar with the black-and-white striped foulard which she now wore. Stella had remodeled her foulard this spring. She had given it a lot of fresh “pep,” with generous dashes of Kelly green. Deborah seemed familiar with the foulard, too.

“What woman?” Frances inquired.

“Why, my dear, look, look for yourself, and see. Don’t you remember that dreadful dress? Of course you do! You were with us. You saw her about two weeks ago. She was around the hotel all one day.”

“Good gracious! Of course I do! We wondered how such a person ever got in here, and then decided she must have come, just for the day, from the unspeakable place on the other side of the lake.”

“Notice her, Laurel,” laughed Deborah, giving Laurel a little squeeze. “I believe she is coming down toward the pier. Take her in. She’s a perfect scream. Paint about an inch think, and plucked eyebrows, and dyed hair, and not a day under forty. Oh, she’s a mess. You remember her, Richard, don’t you?”

“Yes, I remember her. Awful dame! Horrible creature!”

Behind Laurel lay only water. On either side of her lay only water. She could not turn and run. She watched her mother choose the gravel path that led to the pier. (“She is! She’s coming this way, girls!” Deborah delightedly ejaculated.) Then suddenly Laurel exclaimed, “I’ve lost something.”

“Lost something?”

“My watch!” She held up an empty wrist. “It must have dropped off in the canoe.”

She turned back immediately. Richard turned back, too.

“Shan’t we all come and look?” Deborah offered.

“No, please,” Laurel called back.

“You all go along,” Richard ordered. “We’ll find it.”