“I’ve made some lemonade, Mother. It’s on the ice. And there’s some cold watermelon. Come in and get those horrid hot things off. I’ve pulled the bed out where it will get the breeze, if there is any, in the early morning. How is Mrs. McDavitt and the children?”

Ten minutes later, Stella, nightgowned and hair pulled back and braided, too, sat on the back porch under the clothes-reel and drank lemonade, and ate cold watermelon, and gazed at Lollie, seated on top of the coal-box with her bare arms locked about her knees, not talking much, looking up at the lop-sided moon that had been full three nights ago on Stag Island.

Funny place, thought Stella, for the lovely Miss Laurel Dallas, who would be staggering New York society one of these days, to be perched in midsummer. Oh, if she could only tell the poor suffering little kiddie (for she was suffering—she had been pretty crazy about that Grosvenor boy, Stella guessed), if she could only tell her it was only for a short time now, that everything would come out all right in the end. But of course she couldn’t. Mum was the word.

“It’s simply horrid for you here, honey.”

Laurel gave a start, as if she had been a thousand miles away.

“Oh, no, it isn’t,” she assured Stella lightly. “Really, I like it. Oh, we’ll have a good time. See if we don’t. There’s Revere, and Nantasket, and Norumbega.”

“Was it awful lonesome without me?”

“No more awful for me than for you when I’m away, I guess.”

“What did you do?”

“Oh, I sat out here.”

“Gracious! Seventeen, summer, a moon, and alone, out here.”

“About nine o’clock the bell rang. It was Mr. Munn.”

“Oh, Ed! Really?”

“He said he saw the light and thought it was probably you who were here, alone, while I was off visiting somewhere. When he discovered it was I, he said please to excuse him, and went away.”

“That sounds real polite of Ed.”

“No, it wasn’t. He didn’t have any right to ring the bell for you—a man like that. He knows we don’t want him. We’ve shown him. Oh, I hate that man, Mother.”

“I know you do. You’ve told me so many times. Funny. You’re your father right over again, Lollie.”

“Did father ever see Ed Munn?”

“Mercy, yes!”

“Did Father ever hate Ed Munn?”

“Like fury,” laughed Stella, “and there was never any sense in it either—no more than with you—just a whim.”

Laurel still gazing at the moon and the few far dim stars that seemed to lie beyond was silent. Was Alfred Munn one of the pieces of the puzzle, too?

4