her from the depths. As
she lay there a longing came upon her.

"If I could be sure he wouldn't come I'd dip my feet," she murmured.

As, however, he had come every evening for a fortnight past the fancy
was not to be indulged, and she consoled herself by a deeper dive yet
of her arms and by drooping her head till her nose and the extreme
fringe of her eyelashes were wetted, and the stray locks floated on
either side.

Presently, as she still looked, she saw another shadow on the water,
and exchanged with her image a confidential glance.

"You again?" she asked.

The other shadow nodded.

"Why didn't you come in the canoe?"

"Because people see it."

It struck her that her attitude was unconventional, and by a lithe
complicated movement, whereof Charlie noticed only the elegance and not
the details, she swept round and, sitting, looked up at him.

"I know who she was," she observed.

"She very nearly knew who you were. You oughtn't to have come to the
window."

"She thought I was the ghost."

"You shouldn't reckon on people being foolish."

"Shouldn't I? Yet I reckoned on your coming--or there'd have been some
more of me in the water."

"I wish I were an irregular man," said Charlie.

She was slowly turning down her sleeves, and, ignoring his remark,
said, with a question in her tones:

"Nettie Wallace says that Willie Prime says that everybody says that
you're going to marry that girl."

"I believe it's quite true."

"Oh!" and she looked across the Pool.

"True that everybody says so," added Charlie. "Why do you turn down
your sleeves?"

"How funny I must have looked, sprawling on the bank like that!" she
remarked.

"Awful!" said Charlie, sitting down.

She looked at him with uneasiness in her eye.

"Nothing but an ankle, I swear," he answered.

She blushed and smiled.

"I think you should whistle, or something, as you come."

"Not I," said Charlie, with decision.

Suddenly she turned to him with a serious face, or one that tried to be
serious.

"Why do you come?" she asked.

"Why do I eat?" he returned.

"And yet you were angry the first time."

"Nobody likes to be caught ranting out poetry especially his own."

"I believe you were frightened--you thought I was Agatha. The poetry
was about her, wasn't it?"

"It's not at all a bad poem," observed Charlie.

"You remember I liked it so much that I clapped my hands."

"And I jumped!"

The girl laughed.

"Ah, well," she