"Yesterday. Brought my sister Paula, Vance, her husband, and a friend of hers along. I want you all to dine with us to-morrow night. We'll show these blown-in-the-glass New Yorkers that we are not entirely devoid of the social graces even if we are not in the Dude-ranch neighborhood. Got half-way to the Double O before I remembered that it was the old custom to lunch here Sundays. You'll come, won't you?"
"Come!" Jerry's eyes were starry with excitement. "Yes, thank—oh, what beauties!" as Doc Rand puffed up the bank dangling a string of trout for her inspection.
"Take 'em, Steve. You and the Benson boy can cook 'em. Isn't that an equitable division of labor, Mrs. Jerry? I caught them." He dropped to the ground beside her and pulled off his hat. "These—these fishing trips aren't what they were. I miss Nick," he confided as he mopped his hot brow. Jerry's eyes were tender with sympathy. They wandered dreamily to the illimitable spaces above the purple mountains as she asked softly:
"Where is he, Doctor Rand? Death is such a strange thing. I—I try to keep a brave front to Peggy but—but I don't care to think about it."
"Why should you at your age? All your thought should be on making your life count for something. It is different with me. I find it profoundly interesting to wonder and imagine what follows this world. For instance, look at the question in this way. At this moment I can send my mind to the Manor; in spirit I'm pacing the terrace with Sir Peter. I can see the boats chugging up and down the river, can smell the queer fragrance which the sun is baking out of the box hedge in the garden, can hear the birds twittering among the vines. If I can do all that now, what will it be when the spirit is not hampered by the body? It will be like flying, won't it? That reminds me! Oh, Steve!"
Courtlandt poked his head above the bank beneath which he and Benson were cooking the fish. A tiny spiral of smoke rose and with it the aroma of sizzling bacon and frying trout.
"Did you see the plane that went over?"
"Yes, Doc."
"I wonder where it came from. It wasn't one of the government flyers. I know their marks. Did you see the pilot do those stunts above the bluff? Curious that he should pull off that cut-up stuff there, infernally risky I call it. He couldn't have been doing it for my benefit. What do you make of it, Steve?"
"Probably some crazy, reckless flier getting ready for a contest," Courtlandt observed, and disappeared below the bank.