w--"

"Yes, that's the point, Halson," Minver interposed. "Your story is all
very well, as far as it goes; but Rulledge here has been insinuating
that it was Miss Hazelwood who made the offer, and he wants you to bear
him out."

Rulledge winced at the outrage, but he would not stay Halson's answer
even for the sake of righting himself.

"I _have_ heard," Minver went on, "that Braybridge insisted on paddling
the canoe back to the other shore for her, and that it was on the way
that he offered himself." We others stared at Minver in astonishment.
Halson glanced covertly towards him with his gay eyes. "Then that wasn't
true?"

"How did you hear it?" Halson asked.

"Oh, never mind. Is it true?"

"Well, I know there's that version," Halson said, evasively. "The
engagement is only just out, as you know. As to the offer--the when and
the how--I don't know that I'm exactly at liberty to say."

"I don't see why," Minver urged. "You might stretch a point for
Rulledge's sake."

Halson looked down, and then he glanced at Minver after a furtive
passage of his eye over Rulledge's intense face. "There was something
rather nice happened after--But, really, now!"

"Oh, go on!" Minver called out in contempt of his scruple.

"I haven't the right--Well, I suppose I'm on safe ground here? It won't
go any further, of course; and it _was_ so pretty! After she had pushed
off in her canoe, you know, Braybridge--he'd followed her down to the
shore of the lake--found her handkerchief in a bush where it had caught,
and he held it up, and called out to her. She looked round and saw it,
and called back: 'Never mind. I can't return for it now.' Then
Braybridge plucked up his courage, and asked if he might keep it, and
she said 'Yes,' over her shoulder, and then she stopped paddling, and
said: 'No, no, you mustn't, you mustn't! You can send it to me.' He
asked where, and she said: 'In New York--in the fall--at the
Walholland.' Braybridge never knew how he dared, but he shouted after
her--she was paddling on again--'May I _bring_ it?' and she called over
her shoulder again, without fully facing him, but her profile was
enough: 'If you can't get any one to bring it for you.' The words barely
reached him, but he'd have caught them if they'd been whispered; and he
watched her across the lake and into the bushes, and then broke for his
train. He was just in time."

Halson beamed for pleasure upon us, and even Minver said: "Yes, that's
rather