“How absurd!”
“It’s so. Even Mrs. Brown noticed it.”
“Mrs. Brown!” contemptuously.
“You needn’t be so top-lofty. She’s as good as you are, and lots more amiable. There, Lisa, I didn’t mean to say that. I promised myself that if you came down here this summer I wouldn’t say one disagreeable thing. Come, go out in the boat with the rest of us to-morrow. You know the water is not deep enough to be unsafe if we don’t go out too far. Mr. Danforth is going to be busy all morning. He said so.”
To this Lisa graciously agreed, and the next morning was laughing as merrily as any of them in their boat on the blue waters. But while they were all rocking and singing in great glee, Lisa making the most of Basil’s lessons in rowing, they saw another boat coming toward them.
“Hallo, Mr. Dan!” called Porter, catching sight of the occupant; “I thought you were boxed up till noon.”
“So I thought,” was the reply as the boat came alongside, “but the mail let me out of my work by bringing me a letter I did not expect, so I have a respite and couldn’t resist joining you. Here, Basil, you can take care of Miss Persis and Miss Annis. Porter and I will see that Miss Holmes overcomes her difficulty,” for Lisa was trying in vain to keep her oar from flying up in the air, while Basil was laughingly directing her. And before she could utter a word of remonstrance Mr. Danforth stepped aboard, steadying the two boats and handing Persis and Annis into the one he had just left, while Basil exchanged places with him.
“I am fairly caught,” thought Lisa. “I can’t swim, I can’t run away, so I’ll have to make the best of it.” And she amiably lent herself to her task, although finding a very critical and exacting teacher, who was not disposed to give praise or encouragement simply because she was a pretty girl, and she felt nettled by his lack of recognition. “I’m simply a person,” she told herself. “He acts as if I had no individuality. I don’t believe he knows whether I am old or young, good-looking or ugly. He is horrid!”
There was, however, nothing rude in Mr. Danforth’s manner; he simply avoided the little honeyed speeches and the obsequious attentions which Lisa liked, and she could but admit that he treated her quite as well as she did him.
“He is much nicer to grandma than he is to me,” Lisa told Persis. “He says the nicest little complimentary things to her, and he jumps up and joins her the minute he sees her coming, as if she were the only person in the place of any account.”