"Coffee?" said Mary.
"Please."
"Well," said she, as she poured, "the whys and wherefores don't matter. It's to be a bachelor resort—that seems definitely settled. But I think we had better send the triplets away. I don't want the Pritchard and Herring episodes repeated while my nerves are in this present state. And there's Lee—if she isn't leading Renier into one folly after another, I don't know what she is doing. They seem to think that keeping an inn is a mere excuse for flirtation."
"Don't send them away," said Langham. "If you sent those three girls to a place where there weren't any men at all—they'd flirt with their shadows. Better have 'em flirting where you can watch 'em than where you can't. And besides—are you quite sure that the Pritchard and Herring episodes were mere flirtations? Day before yesterday I came upon Miss Gay by accident; she was practising casting."
"That's how she spends half her time."
"But she was practising with Pritchard's rod! Yesterday I came upon her in the same place——"
"By accident?" smiled Mary.
"By design," he said honestly. "And this time she wasn't casting. She had the rod lying across her knees, and her eyes were turned dreamily toward the bluest and most distant mountain-top."
"'Why do you look at that mountain?' I said.