But for all the whir and flash of brilliant birdlife above the placid
water--for all the screams of the fish hawks and the noise of crows and
grackle in the cypress--for all the presence of another camper among
the trees to the west, the days were quiet and undisturbed. And at
night when the birds were winging to the woods now black against the
yellow west, and the lonely lake began to purple, the fires of the
rival camps were the single spots of color in the heavy darkness along
the shore.
Diane wrote of it, with disastrous results, to Aunt Agatha.
At sunset, one day, a carriage produced an aggrieved rustle of silk, a
voice and a hand bag. Each fluttered a little as the driver accepted
his fare and rolled away. The hand bag, in accordance with a
sensational and ill-conditioned habit which had roused more than one
unpopular commotion in crowded department stores and thoroughfares,
leaped unexpectedly from a gloved and fluttering hand.
Aunt Agatha possessed herself of the bag with a sniff and rustled
heedlessly into the nearest camp.
It was, of course, Mr. Poynter's.
Utterly confounded by the unexpected sight of a tall young man who was
cooking a fish over the fire, Aunt Agatha gurgled fearfully and backed
precipitately into the nearest tree, whence the ill-natured hand bag
forcibly opened a grinning mouth, leaped into space and disgorged a
flying shower of nickels and dimes, smelling salts and hairpins and a
variety of fussy contrivances of sentimental value.
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