Olly, little Maggie Dexter, and an assortment of sturdy urchins known throughout Joppa only as the Anthony boys, were dancing and chattering aimlessly around, and near by was drawn up a clumsy old boat where Phebe had made a comfortable niche for Miss Delano, who every day at about this hour was afflicted with a remarkable disorder which had grown upon her wholly of late years, and whose symptoms, so far as she was willing to admit them, consisted of a painful heaviness of the eyelids, a weakness in the nape of the neck, and an irresistible tendency to retire for a brief season within herself.

A little farther off still, having taken fortune at the flood and secured De Forest at last, Bell Masters was embarked on another kind of craft, a thorough-going, fully-freighted flirtation, all sails set; and through the trees were glimpses of lazily moving figures beyond, generally in twos and twos, following some occult rule of common division peculiar to picnics.

By degrees the children wandered off up the bank, and presently there came a shout, followed by an evident squabble.

Phebe looked around uneasily.
Gerald kept on with her sport.
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven times, Phebe.

Now do better than that." At this juncture little Maggie ran up, her pretty brown eyes wide and her red lips quivering.