t of
innocent thing later."

"Did you?"

"Certainly. These girls have been brought up like so many guileless
speckled fawns out here in the backwoods. You know all about Guilford,
the poet who's dead stuck on Nature and simplicity. Well, that's the man
and that's his pose. He hasn't any money, and he won't work. His
daughters raise vegetables, and he makes 'em wear bloomers, and he
writes about chippy-birds and the house beautiful, and tells people to
be natural, and wishes that everybody could go around without clothes
and pick daisies----"

"Do _they_?" demanded Wayne in an awful voice. "You _said_ they wore
bloomers. Did you say that to break the news more gently? Did you!"

"Of course they are clothed," explained his friend querulously; "though
sometimes they wade about without shoes and stockings and do the nymph
business. And, George, it's astonishing how modest that sort of dress
is. And it's amazing how much they know. Why, they can talk
Greek--_talk_ it, mind you. Every one of them can speak half a dozen
languages--Guilford is a corker on culture, you know--and they can play
harps and pianos and things, and give me thirty at tennis, even
Chlorippe, the twelve-year-old----"

"Is that her name?" asked Wayne.

"Chlorippe? Yes. That bat-headed poet named all his children after
butterflies. Let's see," he continued, telling off the names on his
fingers; "there's Chlorippe, twelve; Philodice, thirteen; Dione,
fourteen; Aphrodite, fifteen; Cybele, sixteen; Lissa, seventeen; Iole,
eighteen, and Vanessa, nineteen. And, Wayne, never have the Elysian
fields contained such a bunch of wholesome beauty as that mountain
meadow contains all day long."

Wayne, trudging along, suit-case firmly gripped, turned a pair of
suspicious eyes upon his friend.

"Of course," observed Briggs candidly, "I simply couldn't foreclose on
the father of such children, could I? Besides, he won't let me discuss
the subject."

"I'll investigate the matter personally," said Wayne.

"Nowhere to lay their heads! Think of it, George. And all because a
turtle-fed, claret-flushed, idle and rich young man wants their earthly
Paradise for a fish-hatchery. Think of it! A pampered, turtle-fed----"

"You've said that before," snapped Wayne. "If you were half decent you'd
help me with this suit-case. Whew! It's hot as Yonkers on this
cattle-trail you call a road. How near are we to Guilford's?"

An hour later Briggs said: "By the way, George, wh