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An Exchange of Courtesies
by
Mabel did try, and succeeded; but it was a success obtained at the cost of setting at naught all her aunts’ preconceived ideas regarding the correct deportment of marriageable girls. The knockabout was forthcoming shortly after she had demonstrated her amphibious qualities by diving from the rocks and performing water feats which dazed her anxious guardians. Indeed, she fairly lived in her bathing-dress until the novelty wore off. Thomas, the coachman, who had been a fisherman in his day, announced with a grin, after accompanying her on the trial trip of the hired cat-boat, that he could teach her nothing about sailing. Henceforth her small craft was almost daily a distant speck on the horizon, and braved the seas so successfully under her guidance that presently the aunts forbore to watch for disaster through a spyglass.
She could play tennis, too, with the best, as she demonstrated on the courts of The Beaches Club. Her proficiency and spirit speedily made friends for her among the young people of the colony, who visited her and invited her to take part in their amusements. She was prepared to ride on her bicycle wherever the interest of the moment called her, and deplored the solemnity of the family carryall. When her aunts declared that a wheel was too undignified a vehicle on which to go out to luncheon, she compromised on a pony cart as a substitute, for she could drive almost as well as she could sail. She took comparatively little interest in the garden, and was not always at home at five-o’clock tea to read aloud the latest books; but her amiability and natural gayety were like sunshine in the house. She talked freely of what she did, and she had an excellent appetite.
“She’s as unlike the girls of my day as one could imagine, and I do wish she wouldn’t drive about the country bareheaded, looking like a colt or a young Indian,” said Miss Rebecca pensively one morning, just after Mabel’s departure for the tennis-court. “But I must confess that she’s the life of the place, and we couldn’t get on without her now. I don’t think, though, that she has done three hours of solid reading since she entered the house. I call that deplorable.”
“She’s a dear,” said Aunt Carry. “We haven’t been much in the way of seeing young girls of late, and Mabel doesn’t seem to me different from most of those who visit her. Twenty years ago, you remember, girls pecked at their food and had to lie down most of the time. Now they eat it. What I can’t get quite used to is the habit of letting young men call them by their first names on short acquaintance. In my time,” she added with a little sigh, “it would have been regarded as inconsistent with maidenly reserve. I’m sure I heard the young man who was here last night say, ‘I’ve known you a week now; may I call you Mabel?'”
As to young men, be it stated, the subject of this conversation showed herself impartially indifferent. Her attitude seemed to be that boys were good fellows as well as girls, and should be encouraged accordingly. If they chose to make embarrassing speeches regarding one’s personal appearance and to try to be alone with one as much as possible, while such favoritism was rather a fillip to existence, it was to be considered at bottom as an excellent joke. Young men came and young men went. Mabel attracted her due share. Yet evidently she seemed to be as glad to see the last comer as any of his predecessors.
Then occurred the second happening in the tranquil existence of the maiden ladies. One day at the end of the first summer, an easterly day, when the sky was beginning to be obscured by scud and the sea was swelling with the approach of a storm, Dan Anderson, the only son of his father, was knocked overboard by the boom while showing the heels of his thirty-foot knockabout to the hired boat of his neighbor, Miss Mabel Ripley. They were not racing, for his craft was unusually fast, as became a multi-millionaire’s plaything. Besides, he and the girl had merely a bowing acquaintance. The Firefly was simply bobbing along on the same tack as the Enchantress, while the fair skipper, who had another girl as a companion, tried vainly, at a respectful distance, to hold her own by skill.