"He carried me a long way," said Phyllis, the tears racing down her cheeks; "and he's only just over typhoid, and he never stopped being cheerful and gallant, and he isn't an ass!"

Herring came to, but was not able to stand. He had kept up as long as he had to, and now there was no more strength in him.

Phyllis accepted the loan of Langham's coat.

"I'll stay with him," she said, "while you go for help."

The moment Langham's back was turned she spread the coat over Herring.

"Please—don't!" he said.

"You be quiet," said she sharply. "How do you feel?"

"Pretty well used up, thank you. Hope you'll 'scuse me for this collapse. Shan't happen again. Lucky thing you and I don't both collapse same moment."

A faint moan was wrung from him. She touched his cheek with her hand. It was hot as fire. She was an old-fashioned girl, and the instinct of nursing was strong in her.

She was an old-fashioned girl. There had almost always been a young man in her life about whom, for a while, she wove more or less intensely romantic fancies. They came; they went. But almost always there was one.

She raised her lovely face and looked at the moon, and made an unspoken confession. There had always been one. Well, now there was another!

Chapter XVI

*

When the real season opened, you might have thought that the whole venture was Mr. Sam Langham's and that he had risked the whole of his money in it. Without being officious, he had words of anxious advice for the Darlings, severally and collectively. His early breakfasts in Smoke House with Mary, the chef beaming upon the efficient and friendly pair, lost something of their free and easy social quality, and became opportunities for the gravest discussions of ways and means.

The opening day would see every spare room in the place occupied—by a man. To Mary it seemed a little curious that so few women, so few families, and so many bachelors had applied for rooms. But to Sam Langham the reasons for this were clear and definite.

"It was the picture in the first issues of your advertisement that did it. I only compliment and felicitate you when I say that every bachelor who saw that picture must have made up his mind to come here if he possibly could. And that every woman who saw it must have felt that she could spend a happier summer somewhere else. Now, if you had circulated a picture of half a dozen men, each as good-looking as your brother Arthur, the results would have been just the opposite."

"Women aren't such idiots about other women's looks as you think they are," said Mary.

"I didn't say they were idiots; I intimated that they were sensible. The prettiest woman at a summer resort always has a good time—not the best, necessarily, but very good. Now, no woman could look at that picture of you and your sisters and expect to be considered the prettiest woman here. Could she, Chef?"