s own fair face," Billy answered
irreverently.

"Cousin Ted, did you say you knew him?"

"I'm not sure; but it seems to me I met him once."

"Oh, I do hope so. I want just once to meet him and hear him talk."

"Even if his voice has a falsetto crack in it?" Billy inquired.

"Even if he's--dumb!" Cicely's climax was lost in a burst of laughter, in
the midst of which she fled from the table.

"Never you mind!" she proclaimed from the doorway. "I'll find a way to
meet him yet. You needn't laugh at me, either, for you're every one of
you hero-worshippers, if you'd only own it." Then she crossed over to the
piazza of Valhalla, where Phebe was drying her hair in the sunshine.
Phebe received the great news disdainfully.

"Oh, that man!" she said, with something that came dangerously near to
being a sniff. "I saw him. After most of the people were gone, he came
down and went into the water."

"Really?" Cicely's tone was rapt. "I wish I'd seen him. How did he look?"

"Atrocious. He is bow-legged, and he wore a rose-colored suit. Against
the green of the waves, he looked like a huge pink wishbone."

"Did he swim beautifully?"

Phebe shook her hair back from her shoulders.

"Like a merman," she said; "a forsaken merman with the gout."

"Babe!"

"Well, if you must know the truth, the abject, literal truth, he hung his
clothes on a hickory limb, as far as going near the water was concerned.
He waded in up to his ankles and stood there, shivering, shivering a day
like this! Then he trotted back and forth a few times and went back to
the bathhouse again without letting a wave touch him. Booby! If he played
golf, he would probably get his caddie to take him around the links in a
wheelbarrow. I do hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing the creature
get boiled." And, with a final flirt of her hair, she marched away into
the house.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

For the next week, Cicely stalked her lion patiently, warily and in vain.
Gifford Barrett had come down to Quantuck, firmly resolved that on no
conditions would he consent to be lionized. His six weeks in Maine had
been all that he could endure. He had at last come to the wise conclusion
that his talent, if he had any, belonged to himself and his work, and was
not to be spread out thin on biscuits and served up at afternoon teas. He
had fled from Maine and from his admiring friends in a mood dangerously
near to disgust. His nostrils were tired of incense. He wishe