his
sister, betrayed every evidence of being heartily grateful for a
distance that precluded conversation and to a Providence that
tolerated _Town Topics_. Sally was left to improve her mind with
a copy of _Vanity Fair_, from contemplation of whose text and pictures
she emerged an amateur adventuress sadly wanting in the indispensable
quality of assurance. It wasn't that she feared to measure wits,
intelligence, or even lineage with the elect. But in how many
mysterious ways might she not fall short of the ideal of Good Form?

What--she pondered gloomily, chin in hand, eyes vacantly reviewing a
countryside of notable charms adrowse in the lethargic peace of a
mid-summer morning--what the dickens was Good Form, anyway?

Nothing, not even her own normally keen power of observation, offered
any real enlightenment.

She summed up an hour's studious reflection in the dubious conclusion
that Good Form had something subtly to do with being able to sit
cross-kneed and look arrogantly into the impertinent lens of a
camp-follower's camera--to be impudently self-conscious, that is--to
pose and pose and get away with it.

The train came to a definite stop, and Sally startled up to find Mrs.
Standish, afoot, smiling down at her with all her pretty features
except her eyes, and Mr. Savage smiling in precisely the reverse
fashion.

"All out," he announced. "Change here for the boat. Another
hour, and--as somebody says Henry James says--there, in a manner of
speaking, we all are."

They straggled across a wharf to a fussy small steamer, Mrs. Standish
leading the way with an apprehensive eye for possible acquaintances
and, once established with her brother and Sally in a secluded corner
of the boat's upper deck, uttering her relief in a candid sigh.

"Nobody we know aboard," she added, smiling less tensely at Sally.

"Eh--what say'?" Mr. Savage inquired from a phase of hypnosis induced
by a glimpse of Good Form in a tailored skirt of white corduroy.

"Nobody of any consequence in this mob," his sister paraphrased,
yawning delicately.

"Oh," he responded with an accent of doubt. But the white corduroy
vanished round a shoulder of the deck-house, and he bestirred himself
to pay a little attention to Sally.

"There's the Island," he said, languidly waving a hand. "That
white-pillared place there among the trees--left of the
lighthouse--that's Aunt Abby's."

Sally essayed a smile of intelligent response. Not that the Island