iron uprights, each sailorman whirled--sometimes
languidly, like a great lady revolving to the slow measures of a waltz,
sometimes so rapidly that he made you quite dizzy, and had he not been
a sailorman with a heart of oak and a head and stomach of pine, he
would have been quite seasick. But the particular sailorman that Latimer
bought for Helen Page and put on sentry duty carried on his shoulders
most grave and unusual responsibilities. He was the guardian of a buried
treasure, the keeper of the happiness of two young people. It was really
asking a great deal of a care-free, happy-go-lucky weather-vane.

Every summer from Boston Helen Page's people had been coming to Fair
Harbor. They knew it when what now is the polo field was their cow
pasture. And whether at the age of twelve or of twenty or more, Helen
Page ruled Fair Harbor. When she arrived the "season" opened; when she
departed the local trades-people sighed and began to take account of
stock. She was so popular because she possessed charm, and because she
played no favorites. To the grooms who held the ponies on the sidelines
her manner was just as simple and interested as it was to the gilded
youths who came to win the championship cups and remained to try to win
Helen. She was just as genuinely pleased to make a four at tennis with
the "kids" as to take tea on the veranda of the club-house with the
matrons. To each her manner was always as though she were of their age.
When she met the latter on the beach road, she greeted them riotously
and joyfully by their maiden names. And the matrons liked it. In
comparison the deference shown them by the other young women did not so
strongly appeal.

"When I'm jogging along in my station wagon," said one of them, "and
Helen shrieks and waves at me from her car, I feel as though I were
twenty, and I believe that she is really sorry I am not sitting beside
her, instead of that good-looking Latimer man, who never wears a hat.
Why does he never wear a hat? Because he knows he's good-looking, or
because Helen drives so fast he can't keep it on?"

"Does he wear a hat when he is not with Helen?" asked the new arrival.
"That might help some."

"We will never know," exclaimed the young matron; "he never leaves her."

This was so true that it had become a public scandal. You met them
so many times a day driving together, motoring together, playing golf
together, that you were embarrassed for them and did not know which way