“No—o. On the whole, I think I'll wait until later. I may call again. Good morning.”
She moved across the threshold. Then, standing on the mica slab which was the step to the kitchen door, she turned to say:
“You didn't swim yesterday.”
“No—o. I—I was busy.”
“I see.”
She paused, as if expecting him to say something further on the subject. He was silent. Her manner changed.
“Good morning,” she said, coldly, and walked off. The assistant watched her as she descended the path to the cove, but she did not once look back. Brown threw himself into a chair. He had never hated anyone as thoroughly as he hated himself at the moment.
“What a cheerful liar she must think I am,” he reflected. “She caught me in that fool yarn about meeting her brother here last summer; and now, after deliberately promising to teach her that stroke, I don't go near her. What a miserable liar she must think I am! And I guess I am. By George, I can't be such a cad. I've got to make good somehow. I must give her ONE lesson. I must.”
The tide served for bathing about three that afternoon. At ten minutes before that hour the substitute assistant keeper of Eastboro Twin-Lights tiptoed silently to the bedroom of his superior and peeped in. Seth was snoring peacefully. Brown stealthily withdrew. At three, precisely, he emerged from the boathouse on the wharf, clad in his bathing suit.
Fifteen minutes after three, Seth Atkins, in his stocking feet and with suspicion in his eye, crept along the path to the edge of the bluff. Crouching behind a convenient sand dune he raised his head and peered over it.