"Don't," protested Truesdale, turning back; "you never looked less like a gentleman."
"I hope your ticket takes in Geneva," said Paston, in no degree offended.
"If it does, I may meet you there; I'm going up to stay over Sunday."
"I can't tell without looking," replied Truesdale; "it's away at the bottom of my trunk." And he moved on. "Rosy's there, though," he called back. He did this largely under the promptings of a sense of justice: Paston was as much entitled to push one project as he himself was to push another.
"Yes, I know," said Paston.
This ubiquitous and ever-welcome person made his presence known throughout Geneva with no loss of time. He caused himself to be remembered by Mrs. Bates for a small dance on Saturday night, and also secured himself from forgetfulness in connection with her steam-yacht excursion for Sunday morning. This active and well-intentioned woman was the prime mover in a poor children's camp which was in process of construction near the far end of the lake. She could not expect her dozen young people to take an absorbing interest in her middle-aged philanthropies; but she knew that an excursion was none the worse for having an objective point, and she did not feel that she was likely to please her guests the less by giving a little incidental pleasure to herself.
"I've got to have something to do," she explained to Paston. "I couldn't be content to come up here and pass the summer in mere idleness." They were sitting on a pair of camp-stools up near the bow. Paston, looking backward, saw Rosamund and William Bates together near the stern.
"It must be a terrible thing to be cursed with ambition and executive ability," observed Paston. "I'm awfully glad I haven't got any."
"Well, there it is," she responded. "I've got to have something on hand.
I've got to engineer. I've got to manage."
Paston brought back his eyes from William Bates and Rosamund. "Everybody knows what a capable manager you are." He said this, as he said so many other things, with a frank and bold directness that made any suspicion of an arrière-pensée almost an impossibility.
"Well, don't commit yourself until you get there; then you can make your own observations." She took his remark as almost anybody else would have felt obliged to take it—just for what it sounded. Nobody understood better than Paston the deceptive quality resident in a truth plumply told.