“And you like it better than Newport?”
“On some accounts—the air, you know, and—”
“I want to tell you,” he said breaking in most illogically—“I want to tell you, Miss Benson, that it was all a wretched mistake at Newport that morning. I don't suppose you care, but I'm afraid you are not quite just to me.”
“I don't think I was unjust.” The girl's voice was low, and she spoke slowly. “You couldn't help it. We can't any of us help it. We cannot make the world over, you know.” And she looked up at him with a faint little smile.
“But you didn't understand. I didn't care for any of those people. It was just an accident. Won't you believe me? I do not ask much. But I cannot have you think I'm a coward.”
“I never did, Mr. King. Perhaps you do not see what society is as I do. People think they can face it when they cannot. I can't say what I mean, and I think we'd better not talk about it.”
The boat was landing; and the party streamed up into the woods, and with jest and laughter and feigned anxiety about danger and assistance, picked its way over the rough, stony path. It was such a scramble as young ladies enjoy, especially if they are city bred, for it seems to them an achievement of more magnitude than to the country lasses who see nothing uncommon or heroic in following a cow-path. And the young men like it because it brings out the trusting, dependent, clinging nature of girls. King wished it had been five miles long instead of a mile and a half. It gave him an opportunity to show his helpful, considerate spirit. It was necessary to take her hand to help her over the bad spots, and either the bad spots increased as they went on, or Irene was deceived about it. What makes a path of this sort so perilous to a woman's heart? Is it because it is an excuse for doing what she longs to do? Taking her hand recalled the day on the rocks at Narragansett, and the nervous clutch of her little fingers, when the footing failed, sent a delicious thrill through her lover. King thought himself quite in love with Forbes—there was the warmest affection between the two—but when he hauled the artist up a Catskill cliff there wasn't the least of this sort of a thrill in the grip of hands. Perhaps if women had the ballot in their hands all this nervous fluid would disappear out of the world.
At Jordan Pond boats were waiting. It is a pretty fresh-water pond between high sloping hills, and twin peaks at the north end give it even picturesqueness. There are a good many trout in it—at least that is the supposition, for the visitors very seldom get them out. When the boats with their chattering passengers had pushed out into the lake and accomplished a third of the voyage, they were met by a skiff containing the faithful chaperons Mrs. Simpkins and Mr. Meigs. They hailed, but Mr. King, who was rowing his boat, did not slacken speed. “Are you much tired, Miss Benson?” shouted Mr. Meigs. King didn't like this assumption of protection. “I've brought you a shawl.”
“Hang his paternal impudence!” growled King, under his breath, as he threw himself back with a jerk on the oars that nearly sent Irene over the stern of the boat.
Evidently the boat-load, of which the Ashley girls and Mr. Van Dusen were a part, had taken the sense of this little comedy, for immediately they struck up: