"Pa-pah!" cried Flavilla.
Far away her parent waved a careless greeting to his offspring, then resumed his oars and his song.
"How extraordinary!" said Flavilla. "Why do you suppose that Pa-pah is rowing somebody's maid around the bay, and singing that way to her?"
"Perhaps it's one of our maids," said Drusilla; "but that would be rather odd, too, wouldn't it, Mr. Yates?"
"A--little," he admitted. And his heart sank.
Flavilla had started down the sandy face of the bluff.
"I'm going to see whose maid it is," she called back.
Drusilla seated herself in the sun-dried grass and watched her sister.
Yates stood beside her in bitter dejection.
So this was the result! His unfortunate future father-in-law was done for. What a diabolical machine! What a terrible, swift, relentless answer had been returned when, out of space, this misguided gentleman had, by mistake, summoned his own affinity! And what an affinity! A saucy soubrette who might easily have just stepped from the coulisse of a Parisian theater!