Tod looked at Anna, and laughed gently. Her cheeks turned the colour of the rose she was holding.
“What’s this about a boating tour?” he inquired of Whitney. It had been alluded to at lunch-time.
“Temple’s going in for one with some more fellows,” was the reply. “He has asked me to join them. We mean to do some of the larger rivers; take our tent, and encamp on the bank at night.”
“What a jolly spree!” cried Tod, his face flushing with delight. “How I should like it!”
“I wish to goodness you were coming. But Temple has made up his party. It is his affair, you know. He talks of staying out a month.”
“One get’s no chance in this slow place,” cried Tod, fiercely. “I’ll emigrate, I think, and go tiger-hunting. Is it a secret, this boating affair?”
“A secret! No.”
“What made you kick me under the table, then, when I would have asked particulars at luncheon?”
“Because the mother was present. She has taken all sorts of queer notions into her head—mothers always have them—that the boat will be found bottom upwards some day, and we under it. Failing that, we are to catch colds and fevers and agues from the night encampments. So we say as little about it as possible before her.”