Pem knew that she ought to call them back; knew it from the white parting at the side of her throbbing little head to the toe of her satin slipper tumultuously beating the ground, as she sank down, an orchid amid her chiffons, to watch.
But it was a moment when the spice of her chowchow name had all spilled over; when the Vain Elf which, according to her father, slept in the shadow of the Wise Woman, was broadly–mutinously–awake.
The boat had drawn in alongside the decked float now.
It was gently rocking there, on and off, the rower having shipped his oars and laid them beside him, his strong fingers now and again hooking the wharf when there was danger of his drifting away, while his obsessed nose was bent closer still to the newspaper sheet, catching the last rays of daylight on it.
He did not look up when the scouts, running out over the plank bridge, spoke to him.
Suddenly one of them–Stud it was–leaned down and snatched the oars, lifted them high in the air, the nickum’s evil genius having prompted him to lay them in the boat’s side nearest the wharf; perhaps it was the demon which he had dared by sitting in the Devil’s Chair.
At the same time Peagreen gave the boat a strong shove outward to where a current caught it and swept it further–mockingly further, towards the darkening center of the Bowl.
“Oh! I say–I say, you fellows, that’s no stunt to pull off!” roared the nickum wrathfully. “I’m due at the dance now!”
“You’re not coming to the dance. There’s a girl here who doesn’t want you!” rang back the voice of callow chivalry in the barbarous pipe of the tenderfoot.
And Pem, slipping up from the grass, her hands to her burning cheeks–for she had not meant it to go as far as this–stole back to the piazza, to dance away from the shamefaced ecstasy of reprisal in her heart.