ny suddenly dropping her magazine. "You are well enough now and I
know you would enjoy it. It is lovely down on the island where the
pavilion is--all quiet and pine-woodsy. You needn't dance if you don't
want to. You could just lie in the hammock and listen to the music and
the water. We'd come and talk to you between dances so you wouldn't be
lonesome. Do come."

"Oh, I couldn't." Ruth's voice was dismayed, her blue eyes filled with
alarm at the suggestion.

"Why couldn't you?" persisted Tony. "You aren't going to just hide away
forever are you? It is awfully foolish, isn't it, Larry?" she appealed to
her brother.

He did not answer, but he did transfer his gaze from the dandelion to
Ruth as if he were considering his sister's proposition.

"Sure, it's foolish," Ted replied for him, sitting up. "Come on down and
dance the first foxtrot with me, sweetness. You'll like it. Honest you
will, when you get started."

"Oh, I couldn't" reiterated Ruth.

"That is nonsense. Of course, you could," objected Tony. "It is just your
notion, Ruthie. You have kept away from people so long you are scared.
But you would get over that in a minute and truly it would be lots better
for you. Tell her it would, Larry. She is your patient."

"I don't know whether it would or not," returned Larry in his deliberate
way, which occasionally exasperated the swift-minded, impulsive Tony.

"Then you are a rotten doctor," she flung back. "I know better than that
myself and Uncle Phil agrees with me. I asked him."

"Ruth's my patient, as you reminded me a moment ago. She isn't Uncle
Phil's." There was an unusual touchiness in the young doctor's voice. He
was not professionally aggressive as a rule.

"Well, I wouldn't be a know-it-all, if she is," snapped Tony. "Maybe
Uncle Phil knows a thing or two more than you do yet. And anyway you are
only a man and I am a girl and I know that girls need people and fun and
dancing. It isn't good for anybody to hide away by herself. I believe you
are keeping Ruth away from everybody on purpose."

The hot weather and other things were setting Tony's nerves a bit on
edge. She felt slightly belligerent and not precisely averse to
picking a quarrel with her aggravatingly quiet brother, if he gave her
half an opening.

Larry flushed and scowled at that and ordered her sharply not to talk
nonsense. Whereupon Ted intervened.

"I'm all on your side, Tony. Of course it is bad for Ruth not to see
anybody but u