"What do you mean?" asked Diane cautiously.
Philip's most innocent beginnings frequently led into argumentative morasses for his opponent.
"Does Johnny have complete freedom in your camp?"
"Certainly!" exclaimed Diane warmly. "Johnny is old and faithful. He may do as he pleases."
Philip changed an angemic worm of considerable transparency for one of more interest to his river audience and smiled.
"Johnny," said he cheerfully, "has been good enough to invite me to stay in camp with him indefinitely. I'm his guest, in fact, until you go home. I imagine that as Johnny's guest I ought to enjoy immunity from sarcastic shafts, but I may be mistaken. I've washed and drained most of these worms. Will you lend me an inch or so of that stout invertebrate climbing out of the can by you?"
Thoroughly out of patience, Diane reeled in her line and returned to camp, whence she presently heard Philip blithely whistling a fisherman's hornpipe and urging Nero to retrieve certain sticks he had thrown into the river. A little later he caught a sunfish and swung into camp with such a smile of irresistible pride and good humor on his sun-browned face, that Diane laughed in spite of herself.
"How ridiculous it is!" she mused uncomfortably. "Here I may not depart for fear a happy-go-lucky young man will play a tin whistle on the steps of the van, and I will not go home. What in the world am I to do with him? Are you an orphan?" she asked with guileful curiosity.
"I'm sorry," said Diane maliciously. "For then I could take out papers of adoption--"
"I'll stay without them," promised Philip. And Diane added wood to the fire with cheeks like the scarlet sunset.
"I'm going to send for my aunt," she announced a few days later.
"Unconventionality of any sort shocks her dreadfully. Like as not she'll faint dead away at the sight of you domiciled in my camp as if you own it. She'll see that you go."
"I'll produce credentials proving I'm a reputable victim of circumstances. I'll suggest that in complete concurrence with her I deem it unsafe for a young and attractive girl to tour about the country--and that I do not feel that I can conscientiously depart. Between the two of us you'll likely have a most uncomfortable hour or so."