shade and wish you joy."

"I wouldn't play it so low down on you," said Fannie, "only my whole
future's mixed up in it. We'll be back in lots of time to eat."

Lila walked with them to the end of the pier at the bathing-beach. The
water was full of people and rubbish. The former seemed to be enjoying
themselves immensely and for the most part innocently, though now and
then some young girl would shriek aloud in a sort of delighted terror as
her best young man, swimming under water, tugged suddenly at her
bathing-skirt or pinched the calf of her leg.

Lila watched Fannie and her young man embark in a tiny rowboat and row
out to a clumsy cabin catboat from which the mast had been removed and
in whose cockpit a low-power, loud-popping motor had been installed. The
young man started the motor, and presently his clumsy craft was dragging
herself, like a crippled duck, down Pelham Bay toward the more open
water of Long Island Sound.

Lila felt herself abandoned. She would have gone straight home but for
the long walk to Westchester and the fact that she had no car fare. She
could have cried. The heat on the end of the dock and the glare from the
water were intolerable. She was already faint with hunger, and her shoes
pinched her so that she could hardly walk without whimpering. It seemed
to her that she had never seen so many people at once. And in all the
crowds she hadn't a single friend or acquaintance. Several men, seeing
that she was without male escort, tried to get to know her, but gave up,
discouraged by her shy, frightened face. She was pretty, yes. But a
doll. No sport in her. Such was their mental attitude.

"She might have left me the sandwiches," thought Lila. "Suppose the
motor breaks down!"

Which was just what it was going to do--'way out there in the sound. It
always did sooner or later when Fannie was on board. She seemed to have
been born with an influence for evil over men and gas-engines.

At the other side of green lawns on which were a running-track, swings,
trapezes, parallel bars, and a ball-field, were woods. The shade, from
where she was, looked black and cold. She walked slowly and timidly
toward it. She could cool herself and return in time to meet Fannie. But
she returned sooner than she had expected.

She found a smooth stone in the woods and sat down. After the sun there
was a certain coolness. She fanned herself with some leaves. They were
poison-ivy, but she did not know that. The per