“Plague take the force of circumstance!” she exclaimed, but did not urge me further, though my suspicions should have been aroused when she said:
“We will take lunch and go to the beach anyway. Shall we?”
“Well, you might do that without breaking the fifth commandment,” I returned, with much less enthusiasm than I felt at the idea of a tête-à-tête picnic with her.
Her answer was a light laugh. There was a swishing of skirts and a twinkle of tan-colored shoes as she sped from the piazza to get ready, leaving me with the certainty that I was a fool, or worse, for allowing her to go unchaperoned, though I was too selfish to attempt to right the neglect.
Something over an hour later a scraggy horse hitched to a scraggy wagon was drawing us to the “Cove,” a mile or so distant from the hotel. A well-packed hamper had been provided and the pace set for the day was nothing less innocent than lunch on the beach, which at this quarter of Long Island is a stretch of snow-white sand and the perfection of isolation.
It was not with feelings of positive delight that, as we neared the Sound, I noticed the Flying Fish, of which Maxwell was master, moored at the edge of the expanse of blue water. From an artistic point it might have satisfied me, as fine material for an aquarelle as, with its mainsail loosely hoisted for drying, it lay against the strip of woods on the other side of the little bay, but it did not satisfy me to have a controversy on the point of taking my companion for a sail, a thing to which I knew her father to be strongly opposed. However, it was not a lengthy skirmish.
“Will you ask Maxwell to take us out—for just an hour?” she asked demurely.
“Not for one instant,” I replied. “Besides, there is no wind.”
“There will be wind enough; you are just determined to be meanly perverse. I will ask him!” And she sent her clear voice across the water in a long-drawn call.
I saw the man on board look up from the work he was fussing over; presently the sail was lowered and, shortly after, the punt drove its nose into the sand of the beach and Maxwell came toward us.