"No, not you, you conceited thing, but your partner. I thought Leslie claimed him as her property. She practically told the Baldwin girls she intended to marry Roderick McRae. And now she's left him and gone off to be a nurse."
Miss Annabel's fair face flushed hotly. "How utterly preposterous. Why, if you lived at Rosemount you'd know whom Mr. McRae would be likely to marry. As for Leslie, she never cared any more for him than you did. You know how she loves fun. She was just enjoying herself. I admit that she might have found a better way of putting in the time, but it was only a girl's nonsense. I was just dreadful that way myself when I was Leslie's age, a few years ago."
"Indeed you were, Annabel," cried Lawyer Ed, scenting danger and wisely steering to a safer subject, "You were a dreadful flirt. Many a heart you broke and I am afraid you haven't reformed either."
This put the lady into a good humour at once. She laughed gaily, confessing that she was really awfully giddy she knew, but she could not help it. And Mrs. Captain Willoughby, who never encouraged Miss Annabel in her youthfulness, said very dryly that she supposed they had all been silly when they were girls but she believed there was a time for everything.
Lawyer Ed saw conversational rocks ahead once more and piloted around them. "What is this I hear about Leslie?" he asked. "Is she going to be a nurse?"
"Oh, dear," groaned Miss Annabel. "That girl will break her mother's heart, and all our hearts. Just think of Leslie who never did a thing harder than put up her own hair going to be a nurse. It is perfectly absurd, but she has gone and Elizabeth will just have to let her go on until experience teaches her better."
"I think it's the most sensible thing she ever did," declared Mrs. Willoughby, "and you shouldn't discourage her. She'll make a fine wife for that boy of yours, Edward."
Lawyer Ed shook his head. He had had his own shrewd suspicions regarding Roderick for some time and Miss Annabel's hint had set him thinking.
"I've been such a conspicuous failure in any attempt to get a wife of my own," he said in the deepest melancholy, "that I wouldn't presume to prescribe for any other man." And he hastened back to his own table.
It was a great day. The Scotchmen ran races, and tossed the caber and walked the greasy pole across from the capsized dock to the Inverness. The Piper played, and the band played, and everybody ate all the ice cream and popcorn and drank all the lemonade possible.