The Green Mouse Part 38

At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently caressing the cla.s.sic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates, in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and looked at Drusilla.

Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded over Cooper's Bluff.

"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from every point of view except looking _down_ hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"

"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"

"Do you think that would help?"

"I think it helps--somehow."

Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over it. She looked at the pad on her knees.

After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't you?"

They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers, and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.

"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.

"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.

"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured Drusilla.

"I think so, too," said Flavilla, was.h.i.+ng a badger brush. "And I am becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."

"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.

Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.

"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.

Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarra.s.sed. "Am I?" she said absently.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil again'"]

"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.

She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.

"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"

He was silent.

"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, some shyness about it--some embarra.s.sment. But there, has been none between you and me."

He said nothing.

She went on absently:

"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for me; and I was not very much surprised. And I said that I cared very much for you.... And, by the way, I meant to ask you yesterday; are we engaged?"

"Are we?" he asked.

"Yes--if you wish.... Is _that_ all there is to an engagement?"

"There's a ring," observed Flavilla, dabbing on too much ultramarine and using a sponge. "You've got to get her one, Mr. Yates."

Drusilla looked at the man beside her and smiled.

"How simple it is, after all!" she said. "I have read in the books Pa-pah permits us to read such odd things about love and lovers.... Are we lovers, Mr. Yates? But, of course, we must be, I fancy."

"Yes," he said.

"Some time or other, when it is convenient," observed Flavilla, "you ought to kiss each other occasionally."

"That doesn't come until I'm a bride, does it?" asked Drusilla.

"I believe it's a matter of taste," said Flavilla, rising and naively stretching her long, pretty limbs.

She stood a moment on the edge of the bluff, looking down.

"How curious!" she said after a moment. "There is Pa-pah on the water rowing somebody's maid about."

"What!" exclaimed Yates, springing to his feet.

"How extraordinary," said Drusilla, following him to the edge of the bluff; "and they're singing, too, as they row!"

From far below, wafted across the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Mr.

Carr's rich and mellifluous voice was wafted sh.o.r.eward:

"_I der-reamt that I dwelt in ma-arble h-a-l-ls._"

The sunlight fell on the maid's coquettish cap and ap.r.o.n, and sparkled upon the buckle of one dainty shoe. It also glittered across the monocle of Mr. Carr.

"Pa-_pah!_" cried Flavilla.

Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then resumed his oars and his song.

"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-_pah_ is rowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"

"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be rather odd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"

"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.

Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.

"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.

Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried gra.s.s and watched her sister.