Mrs. Burton stopped and frowned.
"Betty, dear, please don't ask this of me. Of course if you make it a favor to you, I have no choice but to agree. But I am so tired and shall never be rested in a few weeks. Of course this is not the real trouble. You don't know how disagreeable it is to have youthful geniuses read you their efforts and then be obliged to tell them the truth about their work, or at least the truth as one sees it. It hurts them horribly when you cannot admire what they have done and often they never forgive you. Besides, I am a sympathetic person and really hate having to wound them. As for your young playwright, Allan Drain, to whom you have taken an unaccountable fancy, I several times allowed him to read his efforts to me during the winter when we were shut up in the mountains.[*] I was not busy then and more amiable. His work was only fairly good; really he did not reveal exceptional ability. I am cross and tired now and it would only destroy the boy's pleasure and mine to have to disappoint him. I cannot have him encouraged in the idea that I would ever consider one of his youthful effusions. You are not disappointed, are you?"
[*] See "Camp Fire Girls at Half Moon Lake."
"A little, Polly, but the main thing is that you must not be worried, or have anything affect the pleasure of your first visit to me in 'The House by the Blue Lagoon'. I hope you won't mind the young people."
Mrs. Burton laughed.
"If you mean my Camp Fire girls, Betty, I regard the speech as too impossible to answer. As for the youths whom you have asked to entertain them, or be entertained by them, I've an idea that no one of them will have any attention or time to spare for me. Who is here? Not coming down to dinner last evening I am not sure of all the names the girls poured into my ears."
"Oh, only the girls' special friends, Dan Webster, David Hale, Allan Drain of course, Philip Stead, Alice's and Sally's cousin, and Robert Burton. Bettina surprised me by suggesting that I ask the young fellow whom she met by accident in New York when she was searching for you. I wonder if she has seen a great deal of him in the past winter? Has she spoken of him to you? He seems a pleasant chap and admires Sally Ashton. Do you know, Polly, I have half an idea that David Hale is in love with Bettina, and although she is absurdly young, now and then I feel that I would rather she return his affection and lead a woman's natural existence than pursue this idea of social service that the winter's experience, which I hoped in a way might cure her, seems to have deepened. Anthony says David Hale has a brilliant future ahead of him."
The two friends sat down on a low stone bench a few feet from the lagoon. In the April sky small white clouds played at hide and seek upon the field of blue, reflected in the deeper blue of the water.
"And you would like Bettina, Betty dear, to repeat your own life, marry a famous man and be happy ever after? Most parents seem to want their children to repeat their lives, if they have been at all happy and successful. Yet how few of them ever do! Don't set your heart on this idea of Bettina and David. She does not care for him."
"Nonsense, Polly, how do you know! I believe she likes him extremely. She used to write me of him from France."