had been reduced to scientific principles under
Miss Standish's rule. There was a picnic coffee-pot and a
picnic-dipper, a set of wooden plates and a pile of Japanese paper
napkins. All these went into one basket, together with cups and
glasses and knives and forks. Another, still more capacious, held the
sandwiches and biscuit, the cake and coffee, the pepper and salt,
beside the jar of orange marmalade, and the pies surreptitiously
borrowed from the pantry, where they were reposing upon the larder
shelf, tranquilly awaiting the morrow's dessert. Everything was neatly
stowed away,--no crowding, no crumbling. Miss Standish was willing to
take any amount of trouble; all she asked was to be appreciated.

Flint certainly did not appreciate her. Her particularity he found
"fussiness," her energy annoyed him, and her well-meant interest in
others appeared to him insufferable busy-bodyism. More than once that
afternoon he remembered her with a sense of irritation. "A confounded
old maid," he called her to himself as he pushed off his dory from the
beach below the inn.

But no matter how irritable the frame of mind in which he started, he
could not help being soothed by the tranquillity of the scene around
him as he went on. The west was one sheet of orange. The brilliancy of
the sunset had faded to a tenderer tone. The spikes of the pointed
firs on the mainland stood dark against it. Over in the east, the moon
was rising, pale and spectral, with all her ribs showing like a
skeleton leaf. Jupiter shone out more clearly as the darkness
deepened and the shadows fell more heavily along the strip of shore.

"The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon, large and low,"

Flint quoted to himself. "What is it that comes
next? Something about

"'A mile of warm sea-scented beach.'

Must have been curiously like this. Where is Flying Point anyhow? Oh,
yes; there's the camp-fire."

"Here comes Flint," cried Brady, as he heard the grating of the prow
of the dory on the gravel.

"I should think it was time," grumbled Miss Standish, who had been
making great sacrifices to keep the coffee hot. For some inscrutable
reason, all the people with whom Flint came in contact felt impelled
to do their best for him, let their opinion of him be what it would.

"Well, we thought you must be lost!" called Brady from the height of
the rocks. "We have all had supper; but we have kept some for you."

"Than