Carington had slept off his brief ill-humor, and the friends were in a happier mood as they flitted downstream next day to breakfast with the Lyndsays.
At the Cliff Camp things were not so entirely joyful. Mrs. Lyndsay, after a talk about the simple bill of fare with the black cook they had brought with them, paid a furtive visit to Jack, who was condemned to such tranquillity as was possible, even in bed, for a human machine as restless. She administered a tender scolding, and left him with a book or two. Next she softly opened Rose’s door, and, finding her comfortable and smiling, said, “No, dear, you are to keep still to-day,” and left her to reflect that, on the whole, she was as well satisfied not to meet the “two single gentlemen rolled into one” before the entire family. However clearly the matter had been explained, there remained, and she colored as she thought of it, the remembrance of certain things she had said to her bowman. Nor was it quite pleasing to imagine herself discussed by these two strangers over their evening meal. The scene in the boat—“She would like to have him always as her bowman!” The scene on the beach! And then the obligation! The debt to an unknown man! In what currency should such debts be paid? She smiled, as she quoted to herself:
What need
Good turns be counted as a servile bond
To bind their doers to receive their meed?
Then, having no other more consoling thought on hand, she began to recall how the novelists had dealt with these situations. A man saves your life! What then? As far as she remembered, it always ended in the woman giving the man what he saved—a life!—her life! She would have liked to have certain books to see precisely what they did say, or Aunt Anne, who was herself and generally all books beside. As she played with these questions, a little amused or a trifle annoyed, Miss Anne knocked, and was welcomed.
“Aunt Anne,” she cried merrily, “what would you do for a man who saves you from a horrible mauling by a bear, or possibly from death?”
“The novelists marry them. That cancels the debt, or makes the woman in the end regret the man’s skill and strength.”
“Aunty, that is very cheap cynicism for you, and at eight A. M.! What will you be at dinner?”