e younger children brought their
butterfly-nets and sand-shovels to Austin and Nina for repairs; and
Drina, when Boots deserted her for his Air Line Company, struck up a
wholesome and lively friendship with a dozen subfreshmen and the younger
Orchil girls, and began to play golf like a little fiend.

It was possible, now, to ride cross-country; and Nina, who was always in
terror of an added ounce to her perfect figure, rode every day with
Eileen; and Austin, on a big hunter, joined them two days in the week.

There were dances, too, and Nina went to some of them. So did Eileen,
who had created a furor among the younger brothers and undergraduates;
and the girl was busy enough with sailing and motoring and dashing
through the Sound in all sorts of power boats.

Once, under Austin's and young Craig's supervision, she tried
shore-bird shooting; but the first broken wing from the gun on her left
settled the thing for ever for her, and the horror of the
blood-sprinkled, kicking mass of feathers haunted her dreams for a week.

Youths, however, continued to hover numerously about her. They sat in
soulful rows upon the veranda at Silverside; they played guitars at her
in canoes, accompanying the stringy thrumming with the peculiarly
exasperating vocal noises made only by very young undergraduates; they
rode with her and Nina; they pervaded her vicinity with a tireless
constancy amounting to obsession.

She liked it well enough; she was as interested in everything as usual;
as active at the nets, playing superbly, and with all her heart in the
game--while it lasted; she swung her slim brassy with all the old-time
fire and satisfaction in the clean, sharp whack, as the ball flew
through the sunshine, rising beautifully in a long, low trajectory
against the velvet fair-green.

It was unalloyed happiness for her to sit her saddle, feeling under her
the grand stride of her powerful hunter on a headlong cross-country
gallop; it was purest pleasure for her to lean forward in her oilskins,
her eyes almost blinded with salt spray, while the low motor-boat rushed
on and on through cataracts of foam, and the heaving, green sea-miles
fled away, away, in the hissing furrow of the wake.

Truly, for her, the world was still green, the sun bright, the high sky
blue; but she had not forgotten that the earth had been greener, the sun
brighter, the azure above her more splendid--once upon a time--like the
first phrase of a tale that is tol