HE somebody moving about in the “Grayling” was Flutters. He was arranging boat cushions, folding up wraps and shawls, and putting things generally to rights. Dear little fellow! No one had told him he ought to do this; he did it quite by grace of his own thoughtful intuition, and he found so many little things all the while to do, and did them all so gladly, that he wondered a trifle proudly how the Bonifaces had ever managed without him, and the Bonifaces wondered too.

Finally, when Flutters had gotten everything into literally ship-shape condition, and quite to his mind, off he started up the bank, bending far over, as one must when one attempts to scale a steep place rapidly. So it chanced that he did not see Miss Pauline at all until she spoke to him, and he was himself directly under the scant shadow of the apple-tree.

“Not so fast, sir,” said Pauline, in an authoritative way, which brought Flutters, surprised and breathless, to a standstill.

“Sit down,” she added in a moment, pointing to a rock covered with gray moss, and confronting the limb where she was sitting.

Flutters mechanically obeyed. He knew she must be one of the family, and as he had met many queer people in his day, did not marvel that here was somebody, to all appearances, a little queerer than the rest. She looked very pretty balanced there on the low limb of the tree, in her full-skirted gray gown, and with the western sunlight shining on her back and turning her curling yellow hair into a sort of halo about her forehead. Flutters sat and stared at her.

“Do you like my looks?” she asked complacently.

“Yes,” replied Flutters, astonished; “you are a Miss Van Vleet, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m Miss Pauline Van Vleet.”

“I thought so,” Flutters remarked, just by way of saying something.

“It is best never to say what you think,” said Miss Pauline solemnly. “Folks get themselves into trouble that way.”

Flutters felt inclined to suggest that people would be very stupid and uninteresting if they did not sometimes say what they thought, but wisely concluded it was better not to start an argument with this peculiar young person.

“Are you a new Boniface?” asked Pauline, scanning him closely.

“No, not exactly,” laughed Flutters.

“I did not ask what you were exactly; are you a new Boniface at all?”

What a queer question, thought Flutters, and then went to work to answer it to the best of his ability.

“No, I am not a Boniface at all, but I am new in this part of the country. I used to live in England.”

“What is your name?”

“Flutters.”

Miss Pauline seemed very much amused at this, saying it over to herself two or three times. “Did your father use to call you Flutters?” she asked presently, looking at him searchingly.

“No,” he answered, the color rushing into his brown face, for no one had asked him that direct question before.

“What did he call you?”

“He called me—he called me—but that is one of the things I do not tell to anybody.”

“But, Flutters, child, you will tell me, just me,” and Pauline looked at him with a look as pathetic as though she were pleading for her life.

“But I can’t, Miss Pauline, really I can’t;” whereupon Miss Pauline buried her face in her two pretty hands, and began to cry like a child.



0113

“Why, you’re not crying for that, surely?” Flutters asked, never more astonished in his life.

“Yes, just for that—just for that—and I’ll cry harder and harder until you tell.”

The truth was, all the Van Vleets were so in the habit of humoring this poor sister of theirs, and never crossing her will if it could possibly be helped, that this refusal on Flutters’s part truly seemed to her most preposterous, and she was shedding actual tears. Flutters saw one or two of them find their way through her fingers, and, like other heroes, relented at the sight; besides, what else was to be done?

“I will tell you, I will tell you,” he said softly; “my real name is Arthur Wainwright;” and the mere sound of it, whispered though it was, made him start. It was so long now since he had heard it on the lips of any one! Indeed, ............