This plan was carried out. Mrs. Cortlandt, Mrs. Pendragon, and Mrs. Simpkins were to go as chaperons, and Mr. Meigs had been invited by Mrs. Cortlandt, King learned to his disgust, also to act as a chaperon. All the proprieties are observed at Bar Harbor. Half a dozen long buckboards were loaded with their merry freight. At the last Mrs. Pendragon pleaded a headache, and could not go. Mr. King was wandering about among the buckboards to find an eligible seat. He was not put in good humor by finding that Mr. Meigs had ensconced himself beside Irene, and he was about crowding in with the Ashley girls—not a bad fate—when word was passed down the line from Mrs. Cortlandt, who was the autocrat of the expedition, that Mr. Meigs was to come back and take a seat with Mrs. Simpkins in the buckboard with the watermelons. She could not walk around the “carry”; she must go by the direct road, and of course she couldn't go alone. There was no help for it, and Mr. Meigs, looking as cheerful as an undertaker in a healthy season, got down from his seat and trudged back. Thus two chaperons were disposed of at a stroke, and the young men all said that they hated to assume so much responsibility. Mr. King didn't need prompting in this emergency; the wagons were already moving, and before Irene knew exactly what had happened, Mr. King was begging her pardon for the change, and seating himself beside her. And he was thinking, “What a confoundedly clever woman Mrs. Cortlandt is!”
There is an informality about a buckboard that communicates itself at once to conduct. The exhilaration of the long spring-board, the necessity of holding on to something or somebody to prevent being tossed overboard, put occupants in a larkish mood that they might never attain in an ordinary vehicle. All this was favorable to King, and it relieved Irene from an embarrassment she might have felt in meeting him under ordinary circumstances. And King had the tact to treat himself and their meeting merely as accidents.
“The American youth seem to have invented a novel way of disposing of chaperons,” he said. “To send them in one direction and the party chaperoned in another is certainly original.”
“I'm not sure the chaperons like it. And I doubt if it is proper to pack them off by themselves, especially when one is a widow and the other is a widower.”
“It's a case of chaperon eat chaperon. I hope your friend didn't mind it. I had nearly despaired of finding a seat.”
“Mr. Meigs? He did not say he liked it, but he is the most obliging of men.”
“I suppose you have pretty well seen the island?”
“We have driven about a good deal. We have seen Southwest Harbor, and Somes's Sound and Schooner Head, and the Ovens and Otter Cliffs—there's no end of things to see; it needs a month. I suppose you have been up Green Mountain?”