“But Tom is only your brother.”
“And Henri is nothing at all to you,” rejoined Helen cruelly. “A fiancé is only an expectation. You may change your mind about Henri.”
“Never!” cried Jennie, with horror.
“Well, he keeps you busy, I grant. And there go Tom and Ruth mooning off together with fish lines. Lots of fishing they will do! They are almost as bad as you and Henri. Why!” ejaculated Helen in some heat, “I am just driven to writing scenarios to keep from dying of loneliness.”
“I notice that ‘juvenile lead,’ Mr. Simmons, is keeping you quite busy,” remarked Jennie slyly, as she turned away.
It was a fact that Ruth and Tom enjoyed each others’ company. But Helen need not have been even a wee bit jealous. To tell the truth, she did not like to “get all mussed up,” as she expressed it, by going fishing. To Ruth the adventure was a glad relief from worriment. Much as she tried, she could not throw off all thought of her lost scenario.
She welcomed every incident that promised amusement and mental relaxation. Some of the troupe of actors—the men, mostly—were bathing off the Point.
“And see that man in the old skiff!” cried Ruth. “‘The Lone Fisherman’.”
The individual in question sat upon a common kitchen chair in the skiff with a big, patched umbrella to keep the sun off, and was fishing with a pole that he had evidently cut in the woods along the shore.
“That is that hermit fellow,” said Tom. “He’s a queer duck. And the boys bother him a good deal.”