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 205obligation! 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?”

“I repent, dear. I hate the sneer—easy and obvious. I am always penitent over verbal wickednesses that are mere children of habit, and have no wit to excuse them. Is the question, dear, worth considering?”

“Oh, but seriously—”

206“I mean seriously. Would it not depend on the moral make of the people concerned? Clearly, when those involved are of one world, likely to meet,—to have continuous relations of some sort,—it must lead to close friendship when the debt of life is merely between man and man.”

“Yes; but when a woman owes an unknown person—a man in her own class—an obligation like this? She must feel it—really feel it, as I do.”

“My dear, you are a little absurd. Many debts remain unpaid, and should so remain. How do you pay your debts to Shakspere? And, after all, this is a small affair—Mr. Carington was in no peril.”

“No, it wasn’t that. The thing involved courage and decision. Papa has told me all of it—all. And the ball went only a couple of feet over dear Ned and myself. Any one but a brave and positive man would have hesitated—and, just a moment more! It is dreadful to think of it! Dreadful!”

“Your gratitude is quite too analytical for me, dear.”

“But do you believe, aunty, with mama, that there cannot be true, simple friendships between man and woman?”

“Man and woman? A large question.”

“Yes.”

“Certainly, I believe there can be—more likely, more easy, more possible with us than in Europe. I know of many such, where what was in youth a friendship, limited by conventions, became, as years went on, a larger, deeper, more valuable relation, and yet only and always a friendship.”

207“Thank you!”

“I think myself that when women—married women—grow wise, they will want their husbands to have women friends. Margaret would say, ‘That is an old maid’s opinion.’ Nevertheless, it is mine, and, as I have chosen never to marry, it is valuable. The old maid is a sort of neutral, with the wisdom of both sexes.”

“I should like to choose my husband’s female friends.”

“Should you? I have not talked it out yet, but now I must go. I want to see how your creditor behaves. He may be a true Shylock and want—how many pounds do you weigh, dear?”

“You are horrid, aunty! I certainly do not think you have settled my questions.”

“How can I? or you? or he, for that matter? Time, dear, not only answers letters, but also doubts and difficulties. As a consulting physician, I am told, he is unsurpassed. You are, naturally, in a state of unease to-day, and had better wait until you see what kind of a draft on the bank of gratitude you are called on to pay, or honor, if you like the word better. I don’t know whether, nowadays, commercial men use the word, or the thing. You might send him a silver pitcher, the inscription to be, ‘To my preserver, from the preserved,’ or else—”

“Go away, bad aunty!” cried Rose, laughing. Once alone, she began upon her coffee and rolls, and wished it was next month, and thus, like Carington, turned over her hot chestnuts to pussy-cat time. They were too hot for her.

208Miss Anne went out on the porch, and began watching, with the interest she took in almost all earthly pursuits, Ned’s efforts to tie a salmon-fly, while Dick, beside him, was feeding the drosera’s hairy leaves with minute black gnats, and considering, through a lens, the ferocious certainty with which the vegetable monster closed upon the captives cast among its sensitive limbs. Presently Dick said to her:

“Aunt Anne, is father very angry with Jack?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, because—because he really didn’t have time to think—and it wasn’t cowardly.”

“No, it wasn’t that.”

“But I ran away.” He had a vague feeling that to prove himself to have gone amiss would be to lessen the enormity of Jack’s conduct.

“You went into the wood to call the men, and were the first back on the beach, my Prince Rosy-locks. You are a first-rate liar; but, as you are a Lyndsay, you are not a coward, and you had better kick yourself well for insulting Dick Lyndsay!
I may not turn, I may not flee,
Though many be the spears;
I should not face with better grace
The army of my fears.

I do not blame Jacky as much as your father does. I understand him, I think.”

“He feels awfully, Aunt Anne.”

“That will do no harm, Dick.” The boy turned again to the drosera and his lens.

209Anne was herself so entirely brave that not even the prospect of the coming of added pain had ever been able to make her timid. All forms of courage were to her intelligibly beautiful, knowing as she did that if its mere instinctive form be meaningless, it is, in its higher developments, the knightly defense of all the virtues. She pulled Dick’s ear, playfully, and said, finally:

“Jack will be out at noon. The less you say about it, the better.”

“I guess so,” remarked Dick.

“Ah, here comes Mr. Carington. Now, boys, behave yourselves at breakfast. No nonsense, mind! This is to be a very pretty-behaved family; we will make up for it at lunch.”

The two gentlemen were in turn presented. There were the ordinary greetings, and no word of allusion to the day before, except that Mrs. Lyndsay, in a quiet aside, said to Carington:

“I shall not be quite comfortable until I say how much I thank you—for all of us—all.”

“That is more than enough,” he returned. “How is Miss Lyndsay?”

“Wonderfully well!” And presently they went in to breakfast.

“Here by me, please, Mr. Carington. Anne, sit next to Mr. Carington. This seat, Mr. Ellett—on the left.”

The boys, a little subdued, contented themselves with quiet inspection of the new guests, and the talk slipped readily, in skilful hands, from the subjects of fish and the weather, and flies and rods, to other less 210trivial matters. Anne was unusually silent. She was studying the unconscious Carington, who soon noted the absence of Jack, and as quickly understood its meaning.

“Yes,” said Lyndsay, “these Gaspé men are most interesting. They are clever, competent, and inherently kindly, really good fellows; but their trouble is, and it does not trouble them, that they have no persistent energy. I confess that, being myself, at least while here, without energy, I like its absence.”

“Isn’t it a vast relief, after the endless restlessness of our people,” said Anne, “to fall among folks who are contented, and home-loving, and so uncomplicated?”

“I certainly think so,” said Carington. “And what a surprise it is to meet the stray descendants of loyalists hereabouts and on the 'St. John’s’—I ought to say the ‘Aroostook,’ there are so many ‘St. John’s.’ Some of the best of the Canadians are descendants of those people; but, for the most part, those who settled in certain quarters of Lower Canada are down again to the level of mere laborers or fishermen.”

“And no better off,” said Ellett. “I mean no more energetic than—well, than I am. I hate the very word energy. I quite share your opinions, Miss Lyndsay. There is a nice little conundrum about that word—sounds better in French. But, pardon me, I never repeat conundrums, or make puns.”

“I am so sorry. Are you past persuasion?”

“Entirely.”

“Even as a personal confidence?”

“That is another matter. It will keep. I think, Mr. Lyndsay, you were about to say—”

211“I forget. But no matter. One may talk about, and about things, at breakfast especially. It is pleasant to feel that you may kick—that any one concerned may kick—the foot-ball of talk without reference to a goal.”

“I don’t think my friend Carington would agree to that,” said Ellett. “He likes talk to be well feathered, and go straight home—”

“And I like it,” cried Anne, “to be well feathered, and go zigzag home, or not, like a bird.”

“And, for my part, aside from Ellett’s calumnious nonsense,” laughed Carington, “I have no social creed as to good talk. If it bears sharp analysis, it is probably poor talk.”

“But,” said Anne, “there are some essentials. One must reverse the great maxim that it is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Mrs. Lyndsay regarded the maiden lady with a look of reprobation, in which were trial, judg............