“We are lucky. This is the very kind of night we most wish for our stroll and sail.” Marjorie was rejoicing in the beauty of the night as she and Hal walked slowly along over the white sands.

“How could the night be anything but perfect with you home again, Marjorie?” Hal Macy glanced down at the white-clad girl walking beside him as though he contemplated stopping and gathering her in his arms.

“It might be raining torrents, and still I’d have just come home,” Marjorie answered in the matter-of-fact tone which had once been Hal’s despair. She cast a swift roguish upward glance at her adoring fiancé from under her long curling lashes.

“But it isn’t. It couldn’t be,” Hal tenderly asserted “Say it again, dear. That you are glad to see me; to be walking this old beach again with me. That——”

“I do love to walk this old beach with you—but not too far behind the others. That’s the way Connie and Laurie used to do, and then we used to laugh at them,” Marjorie gaily assured. “Come on, 44let’s hurry.” She ran playfully ahead of Hal, a radiantly pretty figure in the white moonlight.

Hal overtook her in a few long, purposeful strides, saying: “You can’t escape me, beautiful moonbeam girl. You are all in white just as you were on that other night last year when you wouldn’t let me tell you that I loved you. You’ve the same kind of soft white scarf over your shoulders, and two stars for eyes. It’s you instead of the moonlight who lures my poor heartstrings out of me.”

“You have never forgotten that moonlight verse, have you?” Marjorie said lightly. She refused to say that she was pleased to know he had not forgotten it.

“How could I forget it? You quoted it to me on the unhappiest night of my life. Afterward I quoted it you on the happiest night. Is it a wonder—”

“You’d better hurry up if you expect to go sailing this evening,” admonished a cheerful, interrupting voice. Unnoticed by the lovers Danny Seabrooke had come up behind them, bent on teasing the absorbed couple.

“You’d better run ahead, Dan-yell, and untie the boat,” Hal advised in an anything but sentimental tone.

“You are miles behind the times. Our gallant ship floats free. Only Armitage is getting peeved because he has to hang on to the straining galleon’s rope,” Danny added with grinning significance.

45“Run along and tell him that patience is a virtue,” retorted Hal with pleasant irony.

“Tell him yourself when you see him. That will be some time during the evening—we hope. I’ve run till I’m out of breath. I’m going to poke along with you two. It will be restful—and interesting.”

“You may find cause to change your mind,” Hal warned darkly.

“Never. Marjorie will protect me.” Danny beamed trusting faith at Marjorie. He prudently ranged himself upon her other side, peering timidly forward at Hal, his freckled features alive with ludicrous anxiety.

In the midst of a merry argument between him and Hal the trio arrived at the little pier to which the Oriole, Hal’s motor launch, was tied. On the dock three smiling-faced young people awaited Hal and Marjorie. The happiness which Jerry Macy, Constance and Lawrence Armitage felt over the beautiful culmination of Marjorie’s and Hal’s comradeship was as deep and abiding in its own way as was the love between the newly betrothed pair.

“Such a lovely evening.” Jerry greeted them with effusive politeness. “So glad you managed to get here after all.”

“You may give me credit for rushing ’em to the pier,” put in Danny modestly.

“There’s plenty of room for an argument, but who wants to argue on a night like this?” Hal returned 46equably, fixing laughing blue eyes upon Danny.

“You are right, Mr. Macy.” Danny made Hal a derisively respectful bow. “I hope others here besides us cherish the same opinion. You do, I am sure. Don’t you, Geraldine?” He turned hopefully to Jerry.

“I don’t cherish anything,” Jerry returned crushingly.

“Ha-a-a! How sad!” Danny heaved a loud sigh. “What a dreary life you must lead!”

“It suits me,” Jerry asserted, with a cheerful smile. “Who’s going to take the wheel on the run seaward?” she inquired generally. “Don’t all speak at once. Don’t speak at all, if you’re not crazy for the pilot job. I’d like it, if no one else wants it.”

“Oh, if you insist.” Laurie Armitage willingly accorded Jerry the wheel. He stood steadying the boat at the little pier while Hal helped the three girls over the side and into the launch.

Constance and Laurie Armitage had lately returned from another year’s study of music in Europe. They had not reached Sanford in time to see Marjorie before she had gone West with her father and mother to visit Ronny. In consequence they had looked forward to her sunny presence at Severn Beach with an affectionate impatience second only to Hal’s.

“So glad you brought the guitar, Laurie,” Marjorie 47said as Laurie picked it up from the pier floor, where he had laid it briefly, and passed it over the side of the launch to Constance. “Do you know any Spanish songs? I heard such beautiful ones at Mana?a.”

“Only two or three. We are going to Spain next winter to study the Spanish music and find a very old Spanish opera for Connie, if we can. We found an old music folio in Paris in a queer little odds and ends shop that had three numbers in it from an old Spanish opera called ‘la Encantadora’; the enchantress. Next time we go abroad it will be on the trail of la Encantadora,” Laurie declared lightly as he stepped into the launch behind the trio of girls.

“Sometime you and Connie must go to Mexico and hunt up some Spanish Mexican music,” Marjorie said with enthusiasm. She went on to tell them of how she and Ronny had been serenaded by Teresa’s sons and of the tender beauty of the old Spanish song “Las Estrellas.”

Presently the Oriole was darting seaward in the white moonlight with Jerry at the wheel and Danny beside her entertaining her with his ever ready flow of nonsense. Laurie was lightly strumming the guitar as he waited for Constance to decide upon a song. Marjorie and Hal sat side by side on a long cushioned bench looking like two contented children.

Hal would have been far better content, however, to hold one of Marjorie’s hands in his own. 48He allowed them to lie loosely in her lap because he knew she preferred them to be thus. His Violet Girl did not wear her heart on her sleeve. She treated him with her old-time friendly gaiety, showing only occasional flashes of deeper feeling for him. Hal was confident that Marjorie loved him. Unless she had been very sure of her own heart she would never have given him her promise. Yet the reserve which he had for so long schooled himself to maintain when with her still clung to him.

Constance began the impromptu concert with an old French harvest song which was one of the vocal gems the Armitages had brought to light during the past winter. Laurie accompanied her softly on the guitar, the rhythmic beat of the music blending with the faint wash of the water against the boat’s sides. From that she drifted to “Hark, the gentle lark!” and from it to one and another of Brahms’ songs, already favorites of the little company.

“The next number of our program will be a touching sentimental song by Dan-yell Seabrooke,” Laurie banteringly announced. After singing their old Brahms’ favorite, “The Sapphio Ode,” Constance had laughingly gone on a strike, declaring that it was time for someone else to sing.

“What reason have you to suspect that it will be?” Danny fixed a severe gaze upon Laurie. “Do I look sentimental? Do I act sentimental? Do I seem sentimental?”

“Nothing like trying.” Laurie ignored the forceful 49interrogations. “If you try, and don’t succeed—” He made a motion as of pitching something over the boat’s side into the water.

“Nev-vur! I shall succeed; if not in singing, then in dodging,” Danny averred with great resolution. “Hand me the guitar. I wouldn’t trust you with it in such an emergency. You might play off the key and spoil my song.”

“Is that so? What about my risk in handing you the guitar and having it spoiled?”

“About fifty-fifty, I should say.” Danny grinned amiably and reached for the guitar. He pretended to tune it, grumbling. Presently in the midst of his pretense of disfavor he surprised his smiling companions with the charming prelude of “What does your heart say?” a popular baritone solo from “The Orchid,” a New York musical success.

It was the first time that any of the five listeners to Danny had ever heard him seriously attempt a sentimental song. Possessed of a tuneful baritone voice Danny had earned a reputation among his friends as a singer of comic songs. Hal and Laurie regarded the departure merely as a decidedly successful attempt upon Danny’s part to make good. Into Marjorie’s and Constance’s minds, however, the thought sprang instantly that Danny was deeply in love—with Jerry, of course.

As for Jerry! She was hoping no one could see the added color in her cheeks by the bright moonlight. During Danny’s rendition of the song she 50had occupied herself industriously with the wheel, her round, babyish face as nearly a blank as she could make it. Danny hardly ended the solo when she began clapping her hands in light applause.

“Bravo! You win!” she called out. “You certainly gave a fine imitation of a sentimental warbler, Dan-yell. Laurie didn’t think you could do it.”

“Oh, I have nerve enough for anything,” Danny retorted. “What does Mr. Lawrence Armitage know of my talents and capabilities?”

“Not a thing, thank fortune,” asserted Laurie with stress.

“You may have your guitar. I wouldn’t sing you another song if you begged me to. I am going to devote myself to Geraldine. She never treats me kindly, but she’s an improvement upon you.” Danny wisely produced this plea as an excuse to seat himself close to the wheel and Jerry.

She received him without comment, pretending to be listening to the buzz of conversation going on among the others. Laurie was running a series of chords up and down the guitar strings which had an oddly familiar sound both to her ears and Marjorie’s. He continued sounding them a moment or two, then glanced at Hal, nodding.

Suddenly Hal’s sweet echoing tenor voice lifted itself on the moonlit air in a lilting melody that Marjorie had good cause to remember.
“Down the center, little one,
Life for us has just begun!”

51Hal was singing the quaint words of the Irish Minuet. To Marjorie it would ever be the song of songs. Like the prince’s kiss which had wakened the sleeping beauty from her enchanted sleep, sound of it had awakened her dreaming heart and opened her ears to the voice of love.

Involuntarily she stretched forth a hand until it rested lightly upon one of the singer’s. Instantly Hal had caught it, holding it in his own. He bent an adoring glance upon her, and sang on.

“This was what I was wishing for,” he declared fondly the moment he had finished the song. He gathered her slim hand more closely in his own. “I hardly dared take it with everybody looking on, for fear you’d not wish it.”

“It was dear in you to sing that, Hal.” The eyes of the pair met in a long fond glance of affection. “You know I shall always love it best of all songs. You understand why.”

“Yes, dear.” There was quiet rapture in the response. “I forgot to send back the music to it to Leila last spring. So I brought it to the Beach for Laurie to play. I thought you’d like to hear it again.”

“I love it. Think how much of happiness we owe Leila Greatheart. If it had not been for her Irish play you would never have come to Hamilton. You’d probably have gone to Alaska, as you had planned to do.”

“I had begun to feel that I couldn’t bear to see 52you for a while, knowing you didn’t love me,” Hal confessed. “I knew I’d never stop caring for you. I was sure it was the only thing for me to do.”

“I’m so glad you didn’t go. You see, Hal, I should have known later—that I cared—perhaps too late.” Marjorie’s lovely features shadowed. “I had begun to know that I missed you, and I’d read Brooke Hamilton’s journal and had felt a kind of terrible despair over it. He hadn’t understood Angela’s love for him until after her serious illness. Just when he was beginning to be happy he lost her. I couldn’t help wondering if it would be so with me. Brooke Hamilton helped us to our happiness. On that account there is something I’d like to do—I know it would please Miss Susanna. It’s about—about our wedding.”

“Our wedding.” Hal repeated the two magic words in a kind of beatified daze. “What about our wedding, dearest. Are you going to tell me that you’ve changed your mind and are going to marry me in the fall instead of next June?” There was a suppressed, hopeful note in the question.

“Not in the fall, or next June, either.” Marjorie’s up-flashing smile did not match her negative answer. “I can’t desert Hamilton until the dormitory is finished and dedicated and the biography completed. And there’s the Leila Harper Playhouse, too. So it couldn’t possibly be in the fall. But”—Marjorie made a tiny pause—“I think my work at Hamilton will have been completed by the last of next April.” 53She made another brief pause, then said with direct simplicity: “I’d like our wedding to take place on the evening of May Day, at Hamilton Arms. May Day was Brooke Hamilton’s birthday.”

“Marjorie!” Hal exclaimed very softly. He caught Marjorie’s free hand, then prisoned both her hands between his own. “My heart went down when you said ‘not next June.’ But the first of May! That is sooner than I had hoped for. You can depend upon Miss Susanna to back that plan. She’ll be delighted. How about General and Captain? Have you told them yet?”

“No.” Marjorie shook her curly head. “Not yet. There is to be a grand Dean confab tomorrow morning right after breakfast. Oh, I know they will be willing to give up having the wedding at Castle Dean. In some ways I’d love to be married from my dear pretty home in Sanford where our old crowd had such good times. But the Arms has an even stronger claim upon me. I want to make Miss Susanna happy. She has been so wonderful to Hamilton College, and to me,” Marjorie ended eloquently.

Hal’s approval of her idea was not expressed in words. It came in the tightening of his hands on Marjorie’s and the glance of unutterable devotion which he bent upon her.

“You see, Hal,” Marjorie said after a short interval of rapt silence between them, “Hamilton Arms has become like a second home to me. I’m not afraid 54Miss Susanna would object to the fuss and decorating that must naturally go with a house wedding. She’d love it, because she loves us. I thought it all out when I was at Mana?a. That is, the main points. Violets were Brooke Hamilton’s favorite flowers, and you call me your Violet girl. So I am going to have a violet wedding in the spring when there are loads of double, sweet-scented violets in bloom at the Arms.”

Completely absorbed in each other, Hal and Marjorie had drifted far away from the amused quartette of friends who were considerately ignoring their presence. While their friends kept up a lively murmur of conversation the lovers floated far and free upon the boundless sea of romance with love for their pilot.

“If they should come back this evening I’ll see that Macy takes his trick at the wheel,” Danny said to Jerry in a purposeful undertone.

“Oh, they won’t be back until someone leads them off the Oriole onto the pier.” Jerry’s reply was full of deep satisfaction. Marjorie’s final awakening to love for Hal would ever be a blessed marvel to Jerry. “What’s the matter with my steering? Don’t you like it?” she demanded of Danny.

“I have a high opinion of it,” Danny hastily assured. “Only I hate to see you so overworked. I should enjoy having you sit beside me on that bench over there, and holding your hand. I should enjoy——”

55“I shouldn’t enjoy having you,” Jerry interrupted cruelly.

“Say not so. You have never trusted me with your nice plump little hand. I would be very careful of it,” he added ingratiatingly.

“No thank you. I’d rather be excused.”

“Why would you?” Danny persisted with an interested inquiring grin.

Jerry had to laugh. “How can I tell?” she countered. She felt the color rise to her cheeks, and was glad Danny couldn’t detect it by moonlight.

“You can’t—not until you’ve tried holding hands with me,” Danny asserted with a wise air.

“Some other time,” Jerry made indefinite, careless promise.

“No time like the present.” One of Danny’s hands suddenly covered one of Jerry’s as it rested on the wheel. “You wouldn’t be so mean as to leave me out of this hand-holding party, would you?” he asked, an undercurrent of seriousness in his bantering tones.

“No,” replied Jerry with sudden shy brevity. And for the remainder of the ride the Oriole had the advantage of double handpower at the wheel.