"I am not a bit timid, but I don't care to be upset."
"Upset!" laughed Bronson. "Why, I've been upset a dozen times. In such a shallow ditch as this it wouldn't make much difference, as long as we're suitably dressed."
Cynthia looked at him slowly, criticisingly, scornfully. Then she said:
"I should think bathing clothes were the only things suitable for upsetting. And the Charles River isn't a ditch. Of course you didn't know, and we can pardon the ignorant a good deal."
Bronson turned away and left them.
"That last was a scorcher," chuckled Neal, who had been listening attentively. "If there is one thing Bronson hates above another, it is to be thought not to 'know it all,' and he caught on to what you meant."
Cynthia, however, felt a little remorseful. She was quite sure that she had been rude. Bronson was a stranger, and should have been treated with the politeness due to such. But then he was Neil's enemy, and Cynthia could never be anything but loyal to Neal. Thus she soothed her conscience.
When luncheon had been cleared away and the baskets packed to go home, Bronson asked Edith if she would go out with him on the river.
"Just for a little paddle, Miss Franklin," he said. "Do come!"
Cynthia heard him, and she frowned and shook her head vigorously at her sister, hoping that she would not go, but Edith had no intention of declining the invitation. She said yes, with one of her prettiest smiles, and accompanied Bronson to the place where the canoes were drawn up on the bank.