“Guess Jack would have a fine chance!” said Ned.
“‘You are neither of you as brave as me, because I have to marry one of you, and that is an act of courage of which a man is incapable. Also, I can’t swim, but I fell in so as to see which of you is the bravest. I fell in! Trombone jumped in! Mandolin leaped in!’
“‘A mere question of brute skill,’ urged Trombone. ‘It is braver to jump in when you can’t swim than when you can.’
“‘It is very puzzling,’ cried Henrietta. ‘The personal equation—’”
“Shut up, old wisdom! Go ahead, Rosy Posy.”
“‘It is a question in the rule of three. As Trombone is to Mandolin, so is me to the answer.’
“‘You stayed out!’ cried Mandolin, with scorn.
“‘I don’t see my way,’ said the princess. ‘Let Mandolin be B, and Hurdy-Gurdy C, and I am—’
“‘B, C puts them both out of the question,’ said Trombone. ‘They are dead.’”
“Sancho Panza!” cried Ned. “What fine nonsense!”
“‘And me—I—oh, bother!’ said Henrietta. ‘It comes out even.’
“‘But,’ said Hurdy-Gurdy, ‘it is heart-rending what I suffered. I alone had the courage not to jump in. I had the courage of my opinion, which was that I should be drowned, and so break your heart. I really couldn’t. There are three hundred and twenty-one kinds of courage.’
“‘Gracious! How numerically interesting!’ said Henrietta. ‘Dry yourselves, and I will reflect.’
“So she left the three seated on the bank, in the sun, and went away. But once a year she sent her maid to see if they were dry, and to say she was working it out. The second year Hurdy-Gurdy went away, because he was a person who had a good deal of decision of character.
“There!” cried Rose, laughing. “It’s a little too old for you.”
“And whom did she marry?” cried Ned. “Never any one?”
“Never! Like Rose Lyndsay. I am going to live with you all my life at home, and never, never marry.”
Upon this the twins intimated their satisfaction by pulling Ned’s back hair. He howled loudly.
“Look out there!” cried the sternman. “You’ll upset the birch. There are too many of you, anyways.”
Again Rose called them to order, and they were silent a while. In the mean time she sat gazing up the changing waterway. This home-coming, this abrupt transition, this privilege of abandonment to every light, innocent folly, even to enjoying the mad fun of three clever boys, made for her an immense change, and one which she felt to be both wholesome and pleasant. In Europe she had come fully to understand the sacrifice Anne had made in order to be with her, and at last to see but too clearly that Anne Lyndsay was failing. To none was this so clear as to the sufferer; to none less clear than to her brother. As to Margaret, she was by nature conservative. The word hardly describes what I mean. She had an inherent belief in the unchangeableness of things and people. The death of Harry had been the first calamity in a prosperous life. She had so long seen Anne Lyndsay to her mind full of levity that she found it impossible to accept the idea that for this woman, who lowered her crest to no adverse hour, the time could not be very far away when she would cease to smile at pain.
