ckles and blue eyes with light lashes. When he
laughed--and he seemed always laughing--he showed splendid teeth.

Both young men stared--but staring was a man's prerogative in Italy and
Maria Angelina was unperturbed. At table she sat serenely, her dark
lashes shading the oval of her cheeks, while the young men's eyes--and
one pair of them, especially--took in the black, braid-bound head and
the small, Madonna-like face, faintly flushed by sun and wind, above the
golden glow of the sheer frock.

Then Johnny Byrd leaned across the table towards her.

"I say, Signorina," he began abruptly, "what's the Italian for peach?"
and as Maria Angelina looked up and started very innocently to explain,
he leaned back and burst into a shout of amusement in which the others
more moderately joined.

"Don't let him get you," was Ruth's unintelligible advice, and Bobby
Martin turned to his friend to admonish, "Now, Johnny, don't start
anything. . . . Johnny's such a good little starter!"

"And a poor finisher," added Ruth smartly and both young men laughed
again as at a very good joke.

"A starter--but not a beginner, eh?" chuckled Cousin Jim, and Mrs. Blair
smiled at both young men even as she protested, "This is the noisiest
table in the room!"

It _was_ a noisy table. Maria Angelina was astounded at the hilarity of
that meal. Already she began censoring her report to Mamma. Certainly
Mamma would never understand Ruth's elbows on the table, her shouts of
laughter--or the pellets of bread she flipped.

And the words they used! Maria could only feel that the language of
Mamma must be singularly antiquated. So much she did not understand
. . . had never heard. . . . What, indeed, was a simp, a boob, a nut?
What a poor fish? . . . She held her peace, and listened, confused by
the astounding vocabulary and the even more astounding intimacy. What
things they said to each other in jest!

And whatever Maria Angelina said they took in jest. She evoked an
appreciative peal when she ventured that the Lodge must be very old
because she had read that the first settlers made their homes of logs.

"I'll take you up and show you _our_ ancestral hut," declared Bob
Martin. "Where Granddad used to stretch the Red Skins to dry by the
back door--before tanning 'em for raincoats."

"Really?" said Maria Angelina ingenuously, then at sight of his
expression, "But how shall I know what you tell me is true or not?" she
appealed. "It all sounds so s