Ah, but it was lovely on the river! She glided around the point of an island and was alone at last, with the stars, the soft, grape-scented breezes, and the dark water. She pulled up the stream with long, swift strokes, and then, where the trees hung low over the still water, she dropped the paddle, and slipping into the bottom of the canoe, leaned back against a cushioned seat and drank in the beauty of the darkness and solitude. She had never been out on Paradise River at night. “And I shall never come again except at night,” she resolved, breathing deep of the damp, soft air. Malaria–who cared for that? And when she was cold she could paddle a little and be warm again in a moment.
Suddenly she heard voices and saw two shapes moving slowly along the path on the bank.
“Oh, do hurry, Margaret,” said one. “I told her I’d be there by eight. Besides, it’s awfully dark and creepy here.”
“I tell you I can’t hurry, Lil,” returned the other. “I turned my ankle terribly back there, and I must sit down and rest, creeps or no creeps.”
“Oh, very well,” agreed the other voice grudgingly, and the shapes sank down on a knoll close to the water’s edge.
Eleanor had recognized them instantly; they were her sophomore friend, Lilian Day, and Margaret Payson, a junior whom Eleanor greatly admired. Her first impulse was to call out and offer to take the girls back in her canoe. Then she remembered that the little craft would hold only two with safety, that the girls would perhaps be startled if she spoke to them, and also that she had come down to Paradise largely to escape Lil’s importunate demands that she spend a month of her vacation at the Day camp in the Adirondacks. So, certain that they would never notice her in the darkness and the thick shadows, she lay still in the bottom of her boat and waited for them to go on.
“It’s a pity about her, isn’t it?” said Miss Payson, after she had rubbed her ankle for a while in silence.
“About whom?” inquired Lilian crossly.
“Why, Eleanor Watson; you just spoke of having an engagement with her. She seems to have been a general failure here.”
Eleanor started at the sound of her own name, then lay tense and rigid, waiting for Lilian’s answer. She knew it was not honorable to listen, and she certainly did not care to do so; but if she cried out now, after having kept silent so long, Lilian, who was absurdly nervous in the dark, might be seriously frightened. Perhaps she would disagree and change the subject. But no—