“I mean, when you had taken me up the Seminary walk to see the cross. When you said good-by that night, I thought I’d mention it. But I changed my mind. You see, you hadn’t had your call, then. I thought—I might—hurt your feelings. But we always do come to Windover. We are coming as soon as Anniversary is over. We have the Flying Jib to ourselves—that little green cottage, you know, on the rocks. What! Never heard of the Flying Jib? You don’t know the summer Windover, do you?”
“Only the winter Windover, you see.”
“Nor the summer people, I suppose?”
“Only the winter people.”
“Father’s hired that old fish-house for a study,” continued Helen with some abruptness. “He says he can’t stand the women on the Mainsail piazzas; you can hear them over at the Flying Jib when the wind sets our way; they discuss the desserts, and pick each other’s characters to pieces, and compare Kensington stitches, and neuralgia. Father is going to bring down his article on ‘The State of the Unforgiven after Death’—There!” she said suddenly, “that Millet sketch is walking into father’s study with his basket on his back. The State of the Unforgiven will be a little—clammy, don’t you think?”
Her eyes rippled like the bed of a brown brook in the sun. Bayard laughed.
“The dear Professor!” he said.
“If father weren’t such an archangel in private life, it wouldn’t be so funny,” observed Helen, jabbing the point of her purple-and-gold changeable silk sun-umbrella into the sand; “I can’t see what he wants the unconverted to be burned up for. Can you?”
“The State of the Unforgiven before Death is more than I can manage,” replied Bayard, smiling; “I have my hands full.”
“Do you like it?” asked Helen, with a pretty, puzzled knot between her smooth brows.