good
point. I can't imagine how any woman can tolerate a man who doesn't
smoke. I suppose one gets used to it, though."

He laughed again, turning up the gas-jet he had lighted, which flickered
in the puffs of wind that came off the water below. "I could tell you a
good story about that."

"That is what I like, a good story. Gas is a nuisance. I wish we had
electric lights. Sydney only wants two things to be perfect, never to
rain and moonlight all the time. Why I declare! If there aren't Hero and
Leander! Well, of all the spooniest, unsociable, selfish people, you two
are the worst. You haven't even had the kindness to let us know you were
in all the time, and you actually see Arty and me toiling away at the
coffee without offering to help. I've given you up long ago, Josie, but I
did expect better things of you, George."

While she had been speaking, pouring the boiling water into the
coffee-pot meanwhile, Arty cutting lemons into slices, the two lovers
discovered by the flickering gaslight got out of a hammock slung across
the end of the verandah and came forward.

"You seemed to be getting along so well we didn't like to disturb you,
Mrs. Stratton," explained George, shaking hands. He was bronzed and
bright-eyed, not handsome but strong and kindly-looking; he had a kindly
voice, too; he wore a white flannel boating costume under a dark cloth
coat. Josie, also wore a sailor dress of dark blue with loose white
collar and vest; a scarlet wrap covered her short curly hair; her skin
was milkwhite and her features small and irregular. Josie and Connie
could never be mistaken for anything but sisters, in spite of the eleven
years between them. Only Josie was pretty and plastic and passionless,
and Connie was not pretty nor plastic nor passionless. They were the
contrast one sees so often in children kin-born of the summer and autumn
of life.

"Don't tell me!" said Mrs. Stratton. "I know all about that."

"Connie knows," said Josie, putting her arms over her sister's shoulders
--the younger was the taller--and drawing her face back. "Do you know,
Arty, I daren't go into a room in a house I know without knocking. The
lady has been married twelve years and when her husband is away he writes
to her every day, and though they have quite big children they send them
to bed and sit for hours in the same chair, billing and cooing. I've
known them--"

"I wonder who they can be," interrupted Mrs. Stratton, twisting herself
f