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“Hulloa!” he called, as if he were addressing a girl of sixteen. “How are you, all these years? Jump in and take a row.”

He made his landing, sprang to the shore and led her to the boat with the air of one who was not in the habit of being refused. Abby had no inclination to suppress him. She stepped lightly into the boat, and a moment later was gliding down the lake, looking with admiring eyes on the strong young figure in its sweater and white trousers. A yachting-cap was pulled over his blue eyes. His face was bronzed. Abby wondered if many young men were as handsome as he. As a matter of fact, he was merely a fine specimen of young American manhood, whose charm lay in his frank manner and kindness of heart.

“Like this?” he asked, smiling into her eyes.

“Yes, indeed. Hiram used to row us sometimes; but the boat lurched so when he lost his temper that I was in constant fear of being tipped over.”

“Hiram must have been a terror to cats.”

“A what?”

“Beg pardon! Of course you don’t know much slang. Beastly habit.”

He rowed up and down the lake many times, floating idly in the long recesses where the willows met overhead. He talked constantly; told her yarns of his college life; described boat-races and football matches in which he had taken part. At first his only impulse was to amuse the lonely old maid; but she proved such a delighted and sympathetic listener that he forgot to pity her. An hour passed, and with it her bitterness. She no longer felt that she must leave Webster Hall. But she remembered her duties, and regretfully asked him to land her.

“Well, if I must,” he said. “But I’m sorry, and we’ll do it again some day. I’m awfully obliged to you for coming.”

“Obliged to me?–you?” she said, as he helped her to shore. “Oh, you don’t know–” And laughing lightly, she went rapidly up the path to the house.

Miss Webster was standing on the veranda. Her brows were together in an ugly scowl.

“Well!” she exclaimed. “So you go gallivanting about with boys in your old age! Aren’t you ashamed to make such an exhibition of yourself?”

Abby felt as if a hot palm had struck her face. Then a new spirit, born of caressed vanity, asserted itself.

“Wouldn’t you have done the same if you had been asked?” she demanded.

Miss Webster turned her back and went up to her room. She locked the door and burst into tears. “I can’t help it,” she sobbed, helplessly. “It’s dreadful of me to hate Abby after all these years; but–those terrible thirty! I’d give three of my millions to be where she is. I used to think she was old, too. But she isn’t. She’s young! Young!–a baby compared to me. I could more than be her mother. Oh, I must try as a Christian woman to tear this feeling from my heart.”

She wrote off a check and directed it to her pastor, then rang for the trained nurse her physician had imported from New York, and ordered her to steam and massage her face and rub her old body with spirits of wine and unguents.

Strowbridge acquired the habit of dropping in on Miss Williams at all hours. Sometimes he called at the dairy and sat on a corner of the table while she superintended the butter-making. He liked her old-fashioned music, and often persuaded her to play for him on the new grand piano in the sky-blue parlor. He brought her many books by the latter-day authors, all of them stories by men about men. He had a young contempt for the literature of sentiment and sex. Even Miss Webster grew to like him, partly because he ignored the possibility of her doing otherwise, partly because his vital frank personality was irresistible. She even invited him informally to dinner; and after a time he joked and guyed her as if she were a school-girl, which pleased her mightily. Of Miss Williams he was sincerely fond.