freshened everything, and furnishings
"came," and she herself were clothed of the dawn and the breeze, like
a flower. She never cared so much for afternoons, she said; of course
one had got through with the prose by that time; but "to go off like
a bird or a bee right after breakfast,--that was living; that was the
Irishman's blessing,--'the top o' the morn-in' till yez!'"

"Won't you come in and have some lunch?" she asked, with the most
magnificent intrepidity, when she hadn't the least idea what there
would be to give them all if they did, as they came round under the
piazza basement, and up to the front portico.

They thanked her, no; they must get home with their flowers; and Mrs.
Ingleside expected Dakie to an early dinner.

Upon which she bade them good by, standing among her great azalea
branches, and looking "awfully pretty," as Dakie Thayne said
afterward, precisely as if she had nothing else to think of.

The instant they had fairly moved away, she turned and ran in, in a
hurry to look after the salt-cellars, and to see that Katty hadn't got
the table-cloth diagonal to the square of the room instead of
parallel, or committed any of the other general-housework horrors
which she detailed herself on daily duty to prevent.

Barbara stood behind the blind.

"The audacity of that!" she cried, as Rosamond came in. "I shook right
out of my points when I heard you! Old Mrs. Lovett has been here, and
has eaten up exactly the last slice of cake but one. So that's Dakie
Thayne?"

"Yes. He's a nice little fellow. Aren't these lovely flowers?"

"O my gracious! that great six-foot cadet!"

"It doesn't matter about the feet. He's barely eighteen. But he's
nice,--ever so nice."

"It's a case of Outledge, Leslie," Dakie Thayne said, going down the
hill. "They treat those girls--amphibiously!"

"Well," returned Leslie, laughing, "_I'm_ amphibious. I live in the
town, and I _can_ come out--and not die--on the Hill. I like it. I
always thought that kind of animal had the nicest time."

They met Alice Marchbanks with her cousin Maud, coming up.

"We've been to see the Holabirds," said Dakie Thayne, right off.

"I wonder why that little Ruth didn't come last night? We really
wanted her," said Alice to Leslie Goldthwaite.

"For batrachian reasons, I believe," put in Dakie, full of fun. "She
isn't quite amphibious yet. She don't come out from under water. That
is, she's young, and doesn't go alone. She told me so."