e always doing such clever things for Papa and Brother
Bob!"

Say, it was a puffy lot of hot air she hands out; but I admit that after
two or three more speeches like that, and with her promisin' to square
anything Piddie might have to say about not comin' back, she had me
goin'.

"Well, what's the proposition?" says I.

"Let's tell him all, so he will understand just what he's to do,"
suggests Marjorie.

And, say, you should have heard them two, with me pinned in between 'em
on the couch, givin' me the tale in a sort of chorus, both talkin' to
once and beginnin' at diff'rent ends.

"It's such a romance!" squeals Marjorie.

"You see, he's coming to-night," says Mildred, "and nobody knows."

"Yes, I got that all down," says I; "but what's the first part? Who is
he and where's he from?"

Well, it's some yarn, all right! Seems that Mildred was a boardin'
school chum of Marjorie's who'd come up from Atlanta to spend the summer
with friends in Newport. As a wind-up to the season they'd taken her on
a yachtin' trip up the coast. Such a poky old trip, too! Nobody aboard
but old married folks that played bridge all the time, and one bald
headed bachelor who couldn't sit out in the moonlight with her unless he
was wrapped up in a steamer rug.

So what was a girl with eyes like Mildred's to do, anyway? She was bein'
bored to death, when, as luck would have it, something went wrong with
the propeller shaft. The yacht was 'way up off the coast of Maine at the
time, and the nearest place where it was safe to anchor was in the lee
of a barren, dinky little island. And they stays there three whole days,
while the crew tinkers things up below and the folks yawn their heads
off.

All but Millie. She got so desp'rate she rowed ashore all by herself.
Accordin' to her description, that must have been a perfectly punk
little island. It was all rock, except in a few spots where there was
some scrub bushes and mangy grass. Plunk in the middle was an old shack
of a house surrounded by lobster pots and racks of codfish spread out to
dry, and she says it was the smelliest scenery she'd ever got real close
to.

But Mildred was sore on the yacht and all the stupid folks on it; so she
wanders out to windward of the worst smells, plants herself on the
flattest rock she can find, and prepares to read. That's her pose when
she looks up and discovers this male party with the sun kissed locks and
the dreamy eyes standin' there gazin' at h