"I can't stand hearing another thing about w.i.l.l.y, Malise," she declared. "I think he's a very dictatorial and outspoken person myself."

So Molly and Alexina and Celeste went back to the hotel, which had filled during the week of their absence. There was life and bustle in the halls as they went in and, from their windows up-stairs, they could see the lake gay with sail-boats.

The talk down-stairs concerned dances, picnics, fishing parties. The somnolent Molly awoke, languor fell from her and she stepped to the centre of the gay little whirl, the embodied spirit of festivity. Mr.

Henderson, incongruous element, was there, too, with deliberate election it would seem, for Molly's eyes did no inviting or encouraging. She did not need him in capacity of attendant or diverter these days, and it was clear that in any other capacity he embarra.s.sed her. But he was not deterred because of that.

"You are coming to church, remember," he told her on Sunday morning.

Molly did not even play at archness with him now; she looked timid.

And at the hour she went, and Alexina with her. They had heard him officiate before, and it seemed the mere performance of the law; but into the dogmatic a.s.sertions of his discourse to-day glowed that fire which is called inspiration. The Reverend Henderson was living these days.

Molly, slim and elegant in her finery, moved once or twice in the pew.

Alexina could not quite tell if she was listening. But she was. "Dear me," she said, from under the shadow of her lace parasol, as they walked home, "how wearing it must be to be so--er--intense." She spoke lightly, but she shivered a little. The Reverend Henderson had laid stress upon his text, "In the midst of life we are in death!"

As they went up the hotel steps Molly turned and looked around her and Alexina turned too, since it was Molly's mood. The sky was blue, the air breathed with life and glow and sparkle. There was a taste almost of sea about it. On the prim young orange trees about the new houses across the street the fruit hung golden.

"He used to reach them for me--Father Bonot did," said Molly, slowly, "before I was tall enough. They're sweeter--Louisiana oranges are. I used to run and hide behind his skirts, too, when I was afraid my mother was going to whip me."

They went in. Half way up the stairs Molly paused. "You Blairs, you're all like _him_--not like Father Bonot."

"Like who?" asked Alexina.

"Like Mr. Henderson. You Blairs and Mr. Henderson would have pulled aside your skirts so my mother could have caught me and whipped me."

Something like apprehension sprang into Alexina's eyes. "Oh," she said anxiously, "no; surely I'm not like that, and Aunt Harriet's not!"

"Yes, you are," said Molly stubbornly, "you all of you are. It's because"--a sort of childish rage seized on her--"it's because you're all of you so--so d.a.m.nably sure of your duty." And Molly's foot stamped the landing in her little fury.

It was funny, so funny that Alexina laughed. And perhaps it was true.

She could have hugged Molly; she never came so near to being fond of Molly before.

December arrived, Christmas came and went. Life was almost pastoral--no, hardly that; it was more _un fete champetre_. Each day after breakfast the hotel emptied itself into the sunshine and merriment, emptied itself, that is, of all but the invalids. Molly shunned these. She never even looked the way of one if she could help it.

There was a lake party one night. They took boat at the hotel pier in various small craft and followed the chain of lakes to an island midway of the farthest. The moon was up as they started.

The party was of the gayest, and one might have said that Mr.

Henderson was out of his element. Certainly his face was hardly suggestive of hilarity. But he followed Mrs. Garnier into one of the larger boats and took his place with a sort of doggedness. Even in the moonlight the sharpening angle of his cheek-bone was visible, and the deepening of the sockets in which his eyes were set, eyes that followed Mrs. Garnier insistently.

Molly being of the party, it followed that Alexina was, too, but that William Leroy was of it seemed to quicken something in his own sense of humour. His manner with the gay world was perhaps a little stony.

He avowed, when thus accused by Alexina and Mr. Jonas, that it was to cover bashfulness.

"I hate people," he declared.

Yet, for a bashful youth, he was singularly deliberate and masterful, seeming to know what he wanted and how to get it. To-night it was that Alexina go with him in a small boat. The others started first, a youth in a striped flannel coat, strumming a guitar.

King put out last. He rowed slowly and often the boat drifted. When they entered the lock connecting the first lake with the next, the other boats had all pa.s.sed through. The moon scarcely penetrated the dense foliage on the banks above them, and the ripple of the water against the boat seemed only to emphasize the silence, the aloofness.

There must have been an early blossom of jasmine about, so sweet was the gloom.

When they pa.s.sed out into the vaulted s.p.a.ce and open water of the next lake, the other boats were far ahead. The tinkling cadence of the guitar floated back to them.

He rowed lazily on. Presently he spoke. "I wonder if you remember how we used to talk, 'way back yonder, about the Land of Colchis?"

"Yes," said Alexina; "I remember."

"I believe we are there at last. We closed the contract for our oranges to-day. It's pretty fair gold, the fruit in Colchis. We pick for delivery on Monday."

He never had talked to her of personal affairs before, it was Mrs.

Leroy who had told her what she knew.

"There are several purchasers looking at the place we are going to sell, for dwellers in Colchis, you know, are only sojourners; they long for home."

"The Jasons, too?"

"This Jason at any rate. He wants four seasons to his year, and to hear his horse's feet on pike, and to put his seed into loam."

They slipped through the next lock and out upon the long length of Cherokee, the lake of the island which was their destination. It seemed to bring self-consciousness upon the speaker.

"You are so the same as you used to be," he said, "I forget. How do I know you want to hear all this?"

"You do know," said Alexina, honestly.

He did not answer. They were coming up to the other boats now, beached at the island. Lights were flickering up and down the sand and the rosy glare of a beach fire shone out from under the darkness of the trees. Figures were moving between it and them and they could hear voices and laughter.

"You do know," repeated the girl.

They had grounded. He was shipping the oars. Then he got up and held out a hand to steady her. She, standing, put hers into it. They did not look at each other.

"Yes," he said, "I do know. You're too honest to pretend."

He helped her along and out upon the sand. There was a negro boy awaiting to take charge of the boat. They went up the slight declivity. He had not loosed her hand, she had not withdrawn it. The laughter, the chat, the aroma of boiling coffee, the rattle of dishes being unpacked reached them. They stood for a moment in the shadow, then her hand left his and they went to join the others.

The dozen men and women were grouped about the pine-knot fire, for the warmth was grateful.

There was badinage and sally, light, foolish stuff, perhaps, but flung like shining nebulae along the way by youth in its whirl of mere being. It is good to know how to be frivolous sometimes. Alexina felt the exhilaration of sudden gaiety, daring. She sat down by the youth with the guitar and the striped flannel coat.

"'And both were young, and one was beautiful,'"

warbled the owner to his guitar, making room for her. "Right here, Miss Blair, by me."

More than one presently stole a look at the tall, rather handsome Miss Blair, hitherto conceded reserved and different from her mother. She was laughing contagiously with the youth, and in the end she gained the guitar over which they were wrangling. She knew a thing or two about a guitar herself, it seemed--Charlotte Leroy could have explained how--as many chords as the owner anyhow. But the young Leroy, it would appear, was sulky, certainly unsociable, sitting there, removed to the outskirts of things, to smoke and stare at the moon. Yet never once did the girl look his way. It was enough that they were to return together.

Nor was she paying attention to Molly either. There are times when the mad leap and rush of one's own blood absorbs all consciousness.

Molly was gay, too, feverishly gay. Some one had brewed a hot something for the delectation and comforting of the chilly ones, and Molly's thin little hand was holding out her picnic cup as often as any one would fill it. It was Mr. Jonas who presently took the cup away and tried to wipe a stain off the pretty dress with his handkerchief.

When the start homeward was made, King came over to Alexina.