packing their steamer trunks and satchels,
the two young girls departed triumphantly for the unindicated but modest
boarding-house tucked away somewhere amid the hills of Delaware County,
determined to enjoy every minute of a vacation well earned, and a
surcease from the round of urban and suburban gaiety which the advent of
July made a labour instead of a relaxation.

From some caprice or other Valerie had decided that her whereabouts
should remain unknown even to Neville. And for a week it suited her
perfectly. She swam in the stump-pond with Rita, drove a buckboard with
Rita, fished industriously with Rita, played tennis on a rutty court,
danced rural dances at a "platform," went to church and giggled like a
schoolgirl, and rocked madly on the veranda in a rickety rocking-chair,
demurely tolerant of the adoration of two boys working their way
through, college, a smartly dressed and very confident drummer doing his
two weeks, and several assorted and ardent young men who, at odd
moments, had persuaded her to straw rides and soda at the village
druggists.

[Illustration: "A smartly dressed and very confident drummer."]

And all the while she giggled with Rita in a most shameless and
undignified fashion, went about hatless, with hair blowing and sleeves
rolled up; decorated a donation party at the local minister's and
flirted with him till his gold-rimmed eye-glasses protruded; behaved
like a thoughtful and considerate angel to the old, uninteresting and
infirm; romped like a young goddess with the adoring children of the
boarders, and was fiercely detested by the crocheting spinsters rocking
in acidulated rows on the piazza.

The table was meagre and awful and pruneful; but she ate with an
appetite that amazed Rita, whose sophisticated palate was grossly
insulted thrice daily.

"How on earth you can contrive to eat that hash," she said, resentfully,
"I don't understand. When my Maillard's give out I'll quietly starve in
a daisy field somewhere."

"Close your eyes and pretend you and Sam are dining at the
Knickerbocker," suggested Valerie, cheerfully. "That's what I do when
the food doesn't appeal to me."

"With whom do you pretend you are dining?"

"Sometimes with Louis Neville, sometimes with Querida," she, said,
frankly. "It helps the hash wonderfully. Try it, dear. Close your eyes
and visualise some agreeable man, and the food isn't so very awful."

Rita laughed: "I'm not as fond of men as that."

"Aren