good
humor, laughed and fell to whistling softly to himself. Despite a
certain significant silence in the camp of his lady, Mr. Poynter smoked
most comfortably, puffing forth ingenious smoke-rings which he lazily
sought to string upon his pipestem and busily engaging himself in a
variety of other conspicuously peaceful occupations. All in all, there
was something so tranquil and soothing in the very sight of him that
Diane unbent in spite of herself.

"If you'd only join a peace tribunal as delegate-at-large," she said,
"you'd eliminate war. I meant to freeze you into going home. I do
wish I could stay indignant!"

"Don't," begged Philip humbly. "I'm so much happier when you're not.

"There _is_ another way of managing me," he said hopefully a little
later. "I meant to mention it before--"

"What is it?" implored Diane.

"Marry me!"

"Philip!" exclaimed the girl with delicate disdain, "the moon is on
your head--"

"Yes," admitted Philip, "it is. It does get me. No denying it.
Doesn't it ever get you?"

"No," said Diane. "Besides, I never bumped my brain--"

"That could be remedied," hinted Philip, "if you think it would alter
matters--"

Diane was quite sure it would not and later Philip departed for the
hay-camp in the best of spirits. In the morning Diane found a
conspicuous placard hung upon a tree. The placard bore a bombastic
ode, most clever in its trenchant satire, entitled--"To a Wild
Mosquito--by One who Knows!"

Since an ill-fated occasion when Mr. Poynter had found a neatly indited
ode to a wild geranium written in a flowing foreign hand, his literary
output had been prodigious. Dirges, odes, sonnets and elegies
frequently appeared in spectacular places about the camp and as Mr.
Poynter's highly sympathetic nature led him to eulogize the lowlier and
less poetic life of the woodland, the result was frequently of striking
originality.

Convinced that Mr. Poynter's eyes were upon her from the hay-camp,
Diane read the ode with absolute gravity and consigned it to the fire.

The minstrel's attitude toward the hay-nomad might be one of subtle
undermining and shrugging ridicule, but surely with his imperturbable
gift of satire, Mr. Poynter held the cards!

Still another morning Diane found a book at the edge of her camp.

"I am dropping this accidentally as I leave," read the fly leaf in
Philip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, but
what can I do if you find t