tly lovely idea for a ballad and I
want to ask your advice about it."

"Oh, do you really? You're not making fun? You mean that my advice is
really worth something? I can't believe it."

He convinced her that it was, and the next Saturday afternoon they spent
together at the inspiration point among the dunes, at work upon the
ballad. It was not finished on that occasion, nor on the next, for it
was an unusually long ballad, but progress was made, glorious progress.

And so, during that Summer, as the Fosdick residence upon the Bay Road
grew and grew, so did the acquaintanceship, the friendship, the poetic
partnership between the Fosdick daughter and the grandson of Captain
Zelotes Snow grow and grow. They met almost every Saturday, they met at
the post office on week evenings, occasionally they saw each other for a
moment after church on Sunday mornings. Mrs. Fletcher Fosdick could not
imagine why her only child cared to attend that stuffy little country
church and hear that prosy Kendall minister drone on and on. "I hope,
my dear, that I am as punctilious in my religious duties as the average
woman, but one Kendall sermon was sufficient for me, thank you. What you
see in THAT church to please you, _I_ can't guess."

If she had attended as often as Madeline did she might have guessed and
saved herself much. But she was busy organizing, in connection with
Mrs. Seabury Calvin, a Literary Society among the summer people of South
Harniss. The Society was to begin work with the discussion of the poetry
of Rabindranath Tagore. Mrs. Fosdick said she doted on Tagore; Mrs.
Calvin expressed herself as being positively insane about him. A
warm friendship had sprung up between the two ladies, as each was
particularly fond of shining as a literary light and neither under any
circumstances permitted a new lion to roar unheard in her neighborhood,
provided, of course, that the said roarings had been previously endorsed
and well advertised by the critics and the press.

So Mrs. Fosdick was too busy to accompany Madeline to church on Sunday
or to walk on Saturday, and the young lady was left to wander pretty
much at her own sweet will. That sweet will led her footsteps to trails
frequented by Albert Speranza and they walked and talked and poetized
together. As for Mr. Fletcher Fosdick, he was busy at his office in New
York and came to South Harniss only for infrequent week-ends.

The walks and talks and poetizings were innocent eno