A rare flower,
an original and highly commendable bit of woodland verse, some luxury
of fruit or camping device, in a hundred delicate ways he contrived to
make the girl his debtor, talking much in his grave and courtly way of
the gratitude he owed her. Adroitly then this romantic minstrel spun
his shining, varicolored web, linking them together as sympathetic
nomads of the summer road; adroitly too he banned Philip, who by reason
of a growing and mysterious habit of sleeping by day had gained for
himself a blighting reputation of callous indifference to the charm of
the beautiful rolling country all around them.
"I'm exceedingly sorry," read a scroll of birch bark which Ras drowsily
delivered to Diane one sunset, "but I'll have to ask you to invite me
to supper. Ras bought an unhappy can of something or other behind in
the village and it exploded.
"Philip."
"If I refuse," Diane wrote on the back, "you'll come anyway. You
always do. Why write? Will you contribute enough hay for a cushion?
Johnny's making a new one for Rex."
It was one of the vexing problems of Diane's nomadic life, just how to
treat Mr. Philip Poynter. It was increasingly difficult to ignore or
quarrel with him--for his memory was too alarmingly porous to cherish a
grudge or resentment.
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