Somehow the note startled me. Could he have had any suspicion? I felt queer and uneasy all the time I was dressing; but after I had had a cup of tea I felt better. There is nothing underhanded about Day. He has no reserves. And if he had learned about the picnic he would have been bleating all over the place.

The weather was splendid--a late summer day, not too warm, with a September haze over everything. We met at the hairdresser's and Jane Henderson was frightfully nervous.

"Of course I'm game," she said, while the man pinned on her net; "but my hands are like ice."

Catherine, however, was fairly radiant.

"There's a sort of thrill about doing something clandestine," she observed, "that isn't like anything else in the world. I feel like eloping with Mr. Lee. You'll all be mad about him. He's the nicest thing!"

Mr. Lee was the Moores' guest.

I had got into the spirit of the thing by that time and I drew a long breath. Day was safely out of the way, the weather was fine, and I had my hair over my ears the way Ferd liked it.

Everything went wonderfully--up to a certain point. Have you ever known it to fail? Everything swims along and all is lovely--and the thing, whatever it may be, is being so successful that it is almost a culmination; and then suddenly, out of a clear sky, there is a slip-up somewhere and you want to crawl off into a corner and die.

Ferd had got there early and had a boat ready, all scrubbed out and lined with old carpets. He was just as excited as any of us.

"The trouble with us," he said, as we rowed over to the island, "is that we are all in a rut. We do the same things over and over, at the same places, with the same people. The hoi polloi never make that mistake and they get a lot more out of life. Every now and then the puddlers from the mill come over here and have a great time."

There were two islands, one just above the other, with about a hundred feet of water between them. The upper island was much the nicer and it was there that Ferd had planned the party.

He does things awfully well, really. He had had a decorator out there early in the day and the pavilion was fixed up with plants and vines which looked as if they grew on it. He had the table fixed too, with a mound of roses and the most interesting place cards. Mine 

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