.

What is that sparkling--a fire-fly ?" But it was the first paper lantern glimmering through the Hitherwood trees from the distant lawn.
"Oh, dear," sighed Eileen, sitting up with an effort, and looking sleepily at Selwyn.

"_J'ai sommeil--besoin--dormir_--" But a few minutes later they were in the great hall of Hitherwood House, opened from end to end to the soft sea wind, and crowded with the gayest, noisiest throng that had gathered there in a twelvemonth.
Everywhere the younger set were in evidence; slim, fresh, girlish figures passed and gathered and crowded the stairs and galleries with a flirt and flutter of winnowing skirts, delicate and light as powder-puffs.
Mrs.Sanxon Orchil, a hard, highly coloured, tight-lipped little woman with electric-blue eyes, was receiving with her slim brunette daughter, Gladys.
"A tight little craft," was Austin's invariable comment on the matron; and she looked it, always trim and trig and smooth of surface like a converted yacht cleared for action.
Near her wandered her husband, orientally bland, invariably affable, and from time to time squinting sideways, as usual, in the ever-renewed expectation that he might catch a glimpse of his stiff, retrousse moustache.
The Lawns were there, the Minsters, the Craigs from Wyossett, the Grays of Shadow Lake, the Draymores, Fanes, Mottlys, Cardwells--in fact, it seemed as though all Long Island had been drained from Cedarhurst to Islip and from Oyster Bay to Wyossett, to pour a stream of garrulous and animated youth and beauty into the halls and over the verandas and terraces and lawns of Hitherwood House.
It was to be a lantern frolic and a lantern dance and supper, all most formally and impressively _sans facon_.

And it began with a candle-race for a big silver gilt cup--won by Sandon Craig and his partner, Evelyn Cardwell, who triumphantly bore their lighted taper safely among the throngs of hostile contestants, through the wilderness of flitting lights, and across the lawn to the goal where they planted it, unextinguished, in the big red paper lantern.
Selwyn and Eileen came up breathless and laughing with the others, she holding aloft their candle, which somebody had succeeded in blowing out; and everybody cheered the winners, significantly, for it was expected that Miss Cardwell's engagement to young Craig would be announced before very long.
Then rockets began to rush aloft, starring the black void with iridescent fire; and everybody went to the lawn's edge where, below on the bay, a dozen motor-boats, dressed fore and aft with necklaces of electric lights, crossed the line at the crack of a cannon in a race for another trophy.
Bets flew as the excitement grew, Eileen confining hers to gloves and bonbons, and Selwyn loyally taking any offers of any kind as he uncompromisingly backed Gerald and Boots in the new motor-boat--the _Blue Streak_--Austin's contribution to the Silverside navy.
And sure enough, at last a blue rocket soared aloft, bursting into azure magnificence in the zenith; and Gerald and Boots came climbing up to the lawn to receive prize and compliments, and hasten away to change their oilskins for attire more suitable.
Eileen, turning to Selwyn, held up her booking list in laughing dismay: "I've won about a ton of bonbons," she said, "and too many pairs of gloves to feel quite comfortable." "You needn't wear them all at once, you know," he assured her.
"Nonsense! I mean that I don't care to win things.

Oh!"-- and she laid her hand impulsively on his arm as a huge sheaf of rockets roared skyward, apparently from the water.
Then, suddenly, Neergard's yacht sprang into view, outlined in electricity from stem to stern, every spar and funnel and contour of hull and superstructure twinkling in jewelled brilliancy.
On a great improvised open pavilion set up in the Hither Woods, garlanded and hung thick with multi-coloured paper lanterns, dancing had already begun; but Selwyn and Eileen lingered on the lawn for a while, fascinated by the beauty of the fireworks pouring skyward from the _Niobrara_.
"They seem to be very gay aboard her," murmured the girl.