Since Mary's proposal of the day before to turn the expensive camp into a profitable inn, the family had talked of little else, and a number of ways and means had already been chosen from the innumerable ones proposed. In almost every instance Arthur had found himself an amused minority. His platform had been: "Make them comfortable at a fair price."
But Mary, who knew the world, had retorted:
"We are not appealing to people who consider what they pay but to people who only consider what they get. Make them luxurious; and they will pay anything we choose to ask."
After Mr. Gilpin's chillsome departure in the Streak, the family resumed the discussion in front of the great fire in the playroom. Wow, the dog, who had been running a deer for twenty-four hours in defiance of all game-laws, was present in the flesh, but his weary spirit was in the land of dreams, as an occasional barking and bristling of his mane testified. Uncas, the chipmunk, had also demanded and received admittance to the council. For a time he had sat on Arthur's shoulder, puffing his cheeks with inconceivable rapidity, then, soporifically inclined by the warmth of the fire and the constant strain incident to his attempts to understand the ins and outs of the English language when rapidly and even slangily spoken, he dropped into Arthur's breast-pocket and went to sleep.
Arthur sighed. He was feeling immensely fidgety; but he knew that any sudden, irritable shifting of position would disturb the slumbers of Uncas, and so for nearly an hour he held himself heroically, almost uncannily, still.
Two years ago, dating from his graduation, Arthur had had a change of heart. He had been so dissipated as to give his family cause for the utmost anxiety. He had squandered money with both hands. He had had a regular time for lighting a cigarette, namely, when the one which he had been smoking was ready to be thrown away. He had been a keen hunter and fisherman. His chief use for domestic animals was to tease them and play tricks upon them. Then suddenly, out of this murky sky, had shone the clear light of all his subsequent behavior. He neither drank nor smoked; he neither slaughtered deer nor caught fish. He was never quarrelsome. He went much into the woods to photograph and observe. He became almost too quiet and self-effacing for a young man. He asked nothing of the world—not even to be let alone. He was patient under the fiendish ministrations of bores. He tamed birds and animals, spoiling them, as grandparents spoil grandchildren, until they gave him no peace, and were always running to him at inconvenient times because they were hungry, because they were sleepy, because they thought somebody had been abusing them, or because they wished to be tickled and amused.
"He's like a peaceful lake," Maud had once said, "deep in the woods, where the wind never blows," and Eve had nodded and said: "True. And there's a woman at the bottom of it."
The sisters all believed that Arthur's change of heart could be traced to a woman. They differed only as to the kind.
"One of our kind," Mary thought, "who wouldn't have him."
"One of our kind," thought Maud, "who couldn't have him."