"I hope you'll like Roaring Lake, Miss Benton," he said, as Benton jingled the go-ahead bell. "I tried to persuade Charlie to stop over awhile, so you could meet my mother and sister, but he's in too big a hurry. Hope to have the pleasure of meeting you again soon."
Miss Benton parried courteously, a little at a loss to fathom this bland friendliness, and presently the widening space cut off their talk. As the boat drew offshore, she saw two women in white come down toward the float, meet Abbey, and turn back. And a little farther out through an opening in the woods, she saw a white and green bungalow, low and rambling, wide-verandahed, set on a hillock three hundred yards back from shore. There was an encircling area of smooth lawn, a place restfully inviting.
Watching that, seeing a figure or two moving about, she was smitten with a recurrence of that poignant loneliness which had assailed her fitfully in the last four days. And while the Chickamin was still plowing the inshore waters on an even keel, she walked the guard rail alongside and joined her brother in the pilot house.
"Isn't that a pretty place back there in the woods?" she remarked.
"Abbey's summer camp; spells money to me, that's all," Charlie grumbled. "It's a toy for their women,—up-to-date cottage, gardeners, tennis courts, afternoon tea on the lawn for the guests, and all that. But the Abbey-Monohan bunch has the money to do what they want to do. They've made it in timber, as I expect to make mine. You didn't particularly want to stay over and get acquainted, did you?"
"I? Of course not," she responded.
"Personally, I don't want to mix into their social game," Charlie drawled. "Or at least, I don't propose to make any tentative advances. The women put on lots of side, they say. If they want to hunt us up and cultivate you, all right. But I've got too much to do to butt into society. Anyway, I didn't want to run up against any critical females looking like I do right now."
Stella smiled.
"Under certain circumstances, appearances do count then, in this country," she remarked. "Has your Mr. Abbey got a young and be-yutiful sister?"
"He has, but that's got nothing to do with it," Charlie retorted. "Paul's all right himself. But their gait isn't mine—not yet. Here, you take the wheel a minute. I want to smoke. I don't suppose you ever helmed a forty-footer, but you'll never learn younger."