parkling waters of Oyster Bay.

At that same moment, also, the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay were gently
caressing the classic contours of Cooper's Bluff, and upon that
monumental headland, seated under sketching umbrellas, Flavilla and
Drusilla worked, in a puddle of water colors; and John Chillingham Yates,
in becoming white flannels and lilac tie and hosiery, lay on the sod and
looked at Drusilla.

Silence, delicately accented by the faint harmony of mosquitoes, brooded
over Cooper's Bluff.

"There's no use," said Drusilla at last; "one can draw a landscape from
every point of view except looking _down_ hill. Mr. Yates, how on earth
am I to sit here and make a drawing looking down hill?"

"Perhaps," he said, "I had better hold your pencil again. Shall I?"

"Do you think that would help?"

"I think it helps--somehow."

Her pretty, narrow hand held the pencil; his sun-browned hand closed over
it. She looked at the pad on her knees.

After a while she said: "I think, perhaps, we had better draw. Don't
you?"

They made a few hen-tracks. Noticing his shoulder was just touching hers,
and feeling a trifle weary on her camp-stool, she leaned back a little.

"It is very pleasant to have you here," she said dreamily.

"It is very heavenly to be here," he said.

"How generous you are to give us so much of your time!" murmured
Drusilla.

"I think so, too," said Flavilla, washing a badger brush. "And I am
becoming almost as fond of you as Drusilla is."

"Don't you like him as well as I do?" asked Drusilla.

Flavilla turned on her camp-stool and inspected them both.

"Not quite as well," she said frankly. "You know, Drusilla, you are very
nearly in love with him." And she resumed her sketching.

Drusilla gazed at the purple horizon unembarrassed. "Am I?" she said
absently.

[Illustration: "Perhaps,' he said, 'I had better hold your pencil
again'"]

"Are you?" he repeated, close to her shoulder.

She turned and looked into his sun-tanned face curiously.

"What is it--to love? Is it"--she looked at him undisturbed--"is it to be
quite happy and lazy with a man like you?"

He was silent.

"I thought," she continued, "that there would be some hesitation, some
shyness about it--some embarrassment. But there, has been none between
you and me."

He said nothing.

She went on absently:

"You said, the other day, very simply, that you cared a great deal for
me; and I was not very much surprised. And I sai