For once Persis kept a golden silence, but a smile of amusement passed over her face. “Such a joke!” she thought. “I’ll let her be surprised.”
And Lisa certainly was surprised a couple of weeks later, when all of the party excepting the tutor were comfortably settled at Bellingly, and the arrival of Mr. Danforth showed her a stalwart young fellow not over twenty-five, who had been a college student himself only a year before.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Persis?” demanded Lisa. “You said you had seen him.”
“I thought you’d enjoy the joke,” returned Persis, demurely. “He took Professor Hunter’s place the last half-year just to fill in while the professor was abroad. Basil says he is one of the best athletes in the college; that what he doesn’t know about sailing a boat and all that sort of thing isn’t worth knowing. Yet he doesn’t let himself get carried away by such matters; he is devoted to study, and is just a regular, nice, manly fellow, not a bit what is called a ladies’ man.”
“I’ve no doubt he is a prig,” decided Lisa. “I shall not bother myself to entertain him.”
“I don’t suppose he’ll be very miserable if you don’t,” retorted Persis, with some of her wonted fire.
Nevertheless, when Lisa encountered a pair of keen blue eyes regarding her across the table she was annoyed at finding herself disposed to wish the owner might be looking at her with favor, and in consequence avoided any appearance of giving a friendly notice to the young man. This, however, in no way disconcerted Mr. Danforth. He devoted himself specially to Mrs. Estabrook during his leisure time when he was not boating or riding or fishing with the boys. Two hours each morning were given to Basil and Persis, and the rest of the day a free-and-easy, homelike way of occupying himself seemed to be what he preferred.
“I just love to go out in the water,” Persis remarked one day, as with glowing face she dried her wet locks. “I wish you’d come, Lisa. Mr. Danforth is such a fine swimmer; he is just like a big sea-lion in the water; he is teaching Annis and me to swim, and I did ten strokes this morning. Maybe you’d like rowing better. I didn’t even catch a crab once yesterday; but, my! I am getting tanned.”
In her secret heart Lisa was sure she would like to know how to use the oars skilfully. She was a fine tennis player, and was equally devoted to golf. Such sports always attracted her, but she had made up her mind that Mr. Danforth ignored her rather too determinedly, and she was not going to make advances, she told herself. “I don’t like your Mr. Danforth,” she informed Persis.
“Well, you might treat him civilly,” returned Persis. “You sweep by him as if he were a small beetle on the floor, and when you say ‘good-morning’ the words sound as if they were wrapped up in a case of blue ice.”