"But you didn't speak to me," said Geoffrey. "You wouldn't speak. Do you suppose I was going to wait all the evening? What a wonderful cap you've got, Mrs. Tree! I'm going to have one made exactly like it. Will you go in to supper with me? Do! I want to cut out the minister, and he is coming to ask you now. I am much more amusing than he is, you know I am."
Mrs. Tree did know it. The minister was waved off, and the oldest parishioner sailed in to supper on Doctor Strong's arm.
"Why don't you get married," she asked on the way, "instead of fooling around old folks this way? If I was your ma'am, I'd find a wife for ye, first thing I did. You're too sassy to stay unmarried."
"Miss Vesta won't have me," said Geoffrey; "and I won't have anybody else, unless you will relent, Mrs. Tree. Now, what do you want? lobster salad? Well, I shall not give you that. If you eat it you will be ill tomorrow, and then Direxia will send for me, and you will throw my medicine out of the window and get well without it, and then laugh in my face. I know you! have some escalloped oysters, there's a dear!"
"I wish't I'd come in with the minister now!" said Mrs. Tree.
"I don't believe a word of it!" said Geoffrey. "It's much less dangerous for you to flirt with me, you know it is; though even now Miss Phoebe is looking at us very seriously, Mrs. Tree, very seriously indeed."
"If I was Phoebe, I'd send you to bed!" said Mrs. Tree. "That's what
I'd do!"
CHAPTER VIII.
REVELATION
It was a perfect evening. The water lay like rosy glass under the sinking sun. Not a breath of air was stirring, and even on the beach the ripple did not break, merely whispered itself away in foam. The canoe moved easily, when it did move, under a practised stroke, but much of the time it lay at ease, rocking a little now and then as a swell rose and melted under it. Vesta lay among her pillows at one end, and Geoffrey faced her. Her face was turned toward the west, and he wondered whether it was only the sunset glow that touched it, or whether the faint rosy flush belonged there. Certainly the waxen hue was gone; certainly the girl was wonderfully better. But he did not look at her much, because it got into his breathing somehow. He had not been paddling for a year, and he was "soft," of course; nothing surprising in that.