For battle it was.
We overtook the canoe somewhere about Long Point, and our lantern showed two people, as we expected. It was Mr. Carleton, who evidently hadn't dressed to elope, and who wore the shirt of a bathing suit and a pair of corduroy trousers, and the Girl. She was in a white party frock of some sort She stopped paddling and stared up at us defiantly as we must have loomed black behind our lantern. She was very pretty, and she had two triangular red spots in her cheeks. Our gentleman pulled the shawl around him and stepped on the thwarts, and even at that distance we could see the angry fear in the girl's eyes.
"Lillian," Mr. Mansfield said cheerfully, "I am not going to do that puppy with you the honor of asking you to choose between us. I give you your choice—either get into the launch comfortably, or stay where you are—in which case I shall run you down and pick you out of the water."
"You coward!" said Mr. Carleton from the stem of the canoe. "You can't try your high-handed methods with me. Run us down if you like. It's a penitentiary offense to kidnap a girl and marry her."
"Oh, piffle r said Mr. Mansfield rudely. "I suppose you didn't intend to marry her yourself at Telusah!"
"I intended to return her to her parents in safety, by way of the trolley," retorted Carleton stiffly.
The Mansfield man threw back his head and laughed.
"Did you hear that, Lillian?" he called. "That's love for you! Why, the idiot didn't even intend to marry you! He was going to take you home to your people!" He laughed again in pure delight.
But the girl had plenty of spirit.
"I don't intend to be married at all," she flared at him. "Certainly not to you, Donald Mansfield. Run us down if you like. I would rather die than marry you."
"You hear what she says," said Carleton, from the darkness. "If you are a gentleman you will take your boat and your ruffianly accomplices back to where you came from—or to hell, as far as I'm concerned."
"Ruffian yourself," Tish said furiously, but I pulled her down. There was silence, then—
"Lillian," Mr. Mansfield said very gently, " 'Lady' Carleton is right. If it's as bad as that I'll take you home. I had a sort of fool idea that you would know it was inevitable— that you were my woman. If I've been a bit raw about it, it's because the thing seemed so clear to me. Give me your hand."
"I shall not get into the launch," the girl said haughtily.
"Your hand."
"Confound you, Mansfidd, can't you see she hates you?" This was Carleton, of course.
"The girlth a fool," Aggie muttered angrily, behind me. In the instant that I turned my head, something happened—I don't know just what For the girl was alone in the canoe, we were alone in the launch, and just below me the water was boiling into white spray. Now and then an arm shot into the air, or a leg, and occasionally, not often, both heads were above water at the same time. And it was then that Aggie, the president of the Civic Club and corresponding secretary of the Working Girls' Home, with her draggled skirts pinned up above her bare feet, stood up suddenly and banged Mr. Carleton on the head with what was left of her oar!
But if that was amazing, the most surprising thing followed. The Girl stood up in the canoe and—
Oh, youVe killed him!" she screeched. Oh, Don! Don!" Donald being the Mansfield man!
Then, of course, the canoe turned over, and the rest of what she was saying ended in a gurgle.
Chapter VI.
"I Will Go with You"
We got them all into a launch finally, for there was only five feet of water, which explained much that we had not understood about the fight, and they were as disconsolate looking a lot of lovers as I ever wish to see. Mr. Carleton sat in the stem and held his head, which Aggie's oar had almost broken, and the girl dripped and shivered in a comer by herself and stared at the Mansfield man, who was coaxing Tish for one of her petticoats so he could give the girl his shawl.
Aggie was for trying to explain to the girl how we came to be there at all, and without our shoes at that. But it was such a long story, beginning with the dog that had fleas ("mange," says Aggie) and extending through robbery to attempted murder ("I only meant to stun him," says Aggie), that I advised her not to begin it.
The launch would not start after all, and it developed that the propeller shaft was choked with weeds. This meant that the Mansfield man must crawl overboard, get on his back under the launch (which is much more unpleasant, I should think, than getting under an automobile), and clear off the shaft. And while he was holding his breath under the boat, and while Tish had turned her back on everybody and with the aid of the lantern was trying to take a splinter out of the sole of her foot, the Carleton man got up dizzily and went over to the girl.
"Surely, Lillian," he said, steadying himself by the awning frame, "you—you don't intend to let that—"
"Please go away," she said. "I don't want to talk. How funny you look with that bandage around your head." And then, to me (she had accepted the presence of three bare-footed maiden ladies in the launch without comment): "Oh, do you think he might be caught in the weeds and—and drown?"
But he did not drown. He came magnificently over the edge of the boat in a few minutes, with a string of green water-weeds clinging to his head. Aggie, who, as you have seen, is romantic, muttered something about "grape leaves in his hair," which she said afterward was Ibsen, although the only use I have ever known for grape leaves was to wrap pats of butter in, in the country.
He turned the launch around and we started for home. I do not recall that any one spoke on the way back, except Tish, who asked me if I had any castor oil at the house: she wanted it to soften her shoes if they dried stiff. The Girl sat by herself and watched the big fellow in the shawl-toga. And once or twice, when he glanced up and saw her, he smiled over at her, but he did not go near her or speak to her.
It was pale dawn when we stopped at the dock of the Watermelon Camp. We, who had been sodden shadows in the night, were now damp and shivering outlines. Mr. Mansfield, having given the girl the shawl, drew arotmd him still closer the awning curtain with which he had draped himself, and Aggie, still clutching the oar, held up one hand in the gray light to hide the deficiencies of her mouth. No one stirred in the camp.
Mr. Carleton got up stiflly and glanced around at all of us. Then he stalked over to the man at the wheel, who was staring ahead and whistling under his breath.
"Will you give me your word to take her home?" he said.
"Ask her if she wants to go home." He threw this over his shoulder, between whistles, as it were. Then the girl, looking very pretty, but slim and slinky in her wet things, went over to the Mansfield man and put her hand on his shoulder.
"I—I think I will go with you, Don!" she said. And that practically ends the story.
We left Mr. Carleton on the dock, staring after us through the mist, and we all went back to the cottage and put the girl to bed. We gave Mr. Mansfield a pillow by the sitting-room wood fire, and Tish's green kimono to sleep in. And after that we all three took a mustard foot-bath and some camphor sprinkled on sugar and went to bed.
Aggie wakened me at nine o'clock the next morning by hunting in my bureau for her second best teeth, and it was then that we found our lovers had gone. In the girl's room there was a letter of thanks. She said she did not wish to disturb us after that awful night, but that she could not sleep, and that she and Mr. Mansfield were going down to Telusah to be married.
Tish read the letter aloud and stared at us, while Paulina whined for her breakfast.
"Upon