"By Jove!" says he. "Bob Ellins' little sister, eh? Hello, Marjorie!"
"Then—then——" gasps Mildred, lookin' from one to the other kind of dazed, "then you aren't a lobster man, after all?"
"Nothing so useful as that, I'm afraid," says Hartley.
"But why were you there on that island?" she insists.
"Well," says he, "hay fever was my chief excuse. I pretend to paint marines, you know, and that's another; but really I suppose I was just being lazy and enjoying the society of Uncle Jerry."
"But he isn't your uncle, truly?" says Mildred.
"Well," says Hartley, "it's a relationship I share with most of the summer people on that section of the Maine coast."
Then a light seemed to break on Mildred. She blushes to her eartips and hides her face in her hands once more. "Oh, oh!" she groans. "And I called you Hermes!"
"You did," says he. "And nothing ever tickled my vanity half so much. I've lived on that for the last two months. Please don't take it back!"
"I—I won't," says Millie, lettin' loose one of them rovin' glances at him sort of shy and fetchin'.