kin' stock o' them two fellers so as to gabble about 'em when
their backs is turned," said John Milton gloomily to himself, with a
dismal premonition of the prolonged tea-table gossip he would be obliged
to listen to later.

"We were very fortunate to make a landing at all last night," said Rice,
looking down upon the still swollen current, and then raising his eyes
to Clementina. "Still more fortunate to make it where we did. I suppose
it must have been the singing that lured us on to the bank,--as,
you know, the sirens used to lure people,--only with less disastrous
consequences."

John Milton here detected three glaring errors; first, it was NOT
Clementina who had sung; secondly, he knew that neither of his sisters
had ever read anything about sirens, but he had; thirdly, that the
young surveyor was glaringly ignorant of local phenomena and should be
corrected.

"It's nothin' but the current," he said, with that feverish youthful
haste that betrays a fatal experience of impending interruption. "It's
always leavin' drift and rubbish from everywhere here. There ain't
anythin' that's chucked into the creek above that ain't bound to fetch
up on this bank. Why, there was two sheep and a dead hoss here long
afore YOU thought of coming!" He did not understand why this should
provoke the laughter that it did, and to prove that he had no ulterior
meaning, added with pointed politeness, "So IT ISN'T YOUR FAULT, you
know--YOU couldn't help it;" supplementing this with the distinct
courtesy, "otherwise you wouldn't have come."

"But it would seem that your visitors are not all as accidental as your
brother would imply, and one, at least, seems to have been expected last
evening. You remember you thought we were a Mr. Parmlee," said Mr. Rice
looking at Clementina.

It would be strange indeed, he thought, if the beautiful girl were not
surrounded by admirers. But without a trace of self-consciousness, or
any change in her reposeful face, she indicated her sister with a slight
gesture, and said: "One of Phemie's friends. He gave her the accordion.
She's very popular."

"And I suppose YOU are very hard to please?" he said with a tentative
smile.

She looked at him with her large, clear eyes, and that absence of
coquetry or changed expression in her beautiful face which might have
stood for indifference or dignity as she said: "I don't know. I am
waiting to see."

But here Miss Phemie broke in saucily with the assertion th