"Dear, it's not 'novels' that I've been taught to despise, but the sort of novel that writer writes. I don't know anything about them myself, but I saw my brother Thorne once put that one you're reading in the stove and jam on the cover, as if he were afraid it would get out. Do you wonder I don't like to see Lucy Peyton reading it?" asked Evelyn gently, with her cheek against the other girl's.
"He must be a terrible Miss Nancy, then," said Lucy, defiantly. "There's not a thing in it that couldn't be in a Sunday-school book. The heroine is the sweetest thing."
"If she is she won't mind your putting her down and coming out for a walk with me," answered Evelyn, with a smile which might have captivated Lucy if she had seen it. But the younger girl got up and flung away out of the room, murmuring that she did not feel like walking, and would take herself and her book where they would not bother people.
Evelyn looked after her with a little sigh, and owned that Jeff might be right in thinking that mere gentle argument with Lucy would have scant effect on a head full of nonsense or a heart whose love for the sweet and true had had far too little development.
Half an hour before the time set for the rendezvous at the summer-house that night Jeff and Just walked down the path, shoulder to shoulder, talking under their breath. Just, being younger, was even more deeply interested than his brother in the prospective encounter, and received his final instructions with ill-concealed glee.
"All right!" he gurgled. "I'm to give him a good scare, in the shape of a lecture--with a thrashing promised if he cuts up any more. He's to give his word, on pain of a lot of things, not to give any of this little performance of his away to a soul. Then he's to be forbidden the premises while Miss Peyton is on them. I understand."
"Well, now, look here," warned Jeff. "I give you leave, but, mind you, I trust your discretion, too. You never can tell what these Willie-boys will do. Dignity's your cue. Be stern as an avenging fate, but don't get to cuffing him round and batting him with language just because you're bigger. You----"
"Look here," expostulated Just, aggrieved, "you picked me out for this job; now leave it to me. I'll have the boy saying 'sir' to me before I get through."
Just ran down to the boat-house, got out a slim craft, launched it, and was about rowing away when he bethought himself of something. He pulled in to the landing, made fast his painter, and ran like a deer up to the house. He was back in five minutes.
"Don't believe I'll go by boat, after all," he whispered to Jeff, standing in the summer-house door. "It might be simpler not to have a boat to bother with. I'll just leave the Butterfly tied there, and put her up when I get back."