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Winslow was well enough to have gone back to the city and, in fact, his father was writing for him. But he couldn’t leave Beckwiths’, apparently. At any rate he stayed on and met Nelly every day and cursed himself for a cad and a cur and a weak-brained idiot.

One day he took Nelly for a row up the river. They went further than usual around the Bend. Winslow didn’t want to go too far, for he knew that a party of his city friends, chaperoned by Mrs. Keyton-Wells, were having a picnic somewhere up along the river shore that day. But Nelly insisted on going on and on, and of course she had her way. When they reached a little pine-fringed headland they came upon the picnickers, within a stone’s throw. Everybody recognized Winslow. “Why, there is Burton!” he heard Mrs. Keyton-Wells exclaim, and he knew she was putting up her glasses. Will Evans, who was an especial chum of his, ran down to the water’s edge. “Bless me, Win, where did you come from? Come right in. We haven’t had tea yet. Bring your friend too,” he added, becoming conscious that Winslow’s friend was a mighty pretty girl. Winslow’s face was crimson. He avoided Nelly’s eye.

“Are them people friends of yours?” she asked in a low tone.

“Yes,” he muttered.

“Well, let us go ashore if they want us to,” she said calmly. “I don’t mind.”

For three seconds Winslow hesitated. Then he pulled ashore and helped Nelly to alight on a jutting rock. There was a curious, set expression about his fine mouth as he marched Nelly up to Mrs. Keyton-Wells and introduced her. Mrs. Keyton-Wells’s greeting was slightly cool, but very polite. She supposed Miss Ray was some little country girl with whom Burton Winslow was carrying on a summer flirtation; respectable enough, no doubt, and must be treated civilly, but of course wouldn’t expect to be made an equal of exactly. The other women took their cue from her, but the men were more cordial. Miss Ray might be shabby, but she was distinctly fetching, and Winslow looked savage.

Nelly was not a whit abashed, seemingly, by the fashionable circle in which she found herself, and she talked away to Will Evans and the others in her soft drawl as if she had known them all her life. All might have gone passably well, had not a little Riverside imp, by name of Rufus Hent, who had been picked up by the picnickers to run their errands, come up just then with a pail of water.

“Golly!” he ejaculated in very audible tones. “If there ain’t Mrs. Pennington’s hired girl!”

Mrs. Keyton-Wells stiffened with horror. Winslow darted a furious glance at the tell-tale that would have annihilated anything except a small boy. Will Evans grinned and went on talking to Nelly, who had failed to hear, or at least to heed, the exclamation.

The mischief was done, the social thermometer went down to zero in Nelly’s neighbourhood. The women ignored her altogether. Winslow set his teeth together and registered a mental vow to wring Rufus Hent’s sunburned neck at the first opportunity. He escorted Nelly to the table and waited on her with ostentatious deference, while Mrs. Keyton-Wells glanced at him stonily and made up her mind to tell his mother when she went home.

Nelly’s social ostracism did not affect her appetite. But after lunch was over, she walked down to the skiff. Winslow followed her.

“Do you want to go home?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s time I went, for the cats may be raidin’ the pantry. But you must not come; your friends here want you.”

“Nonsense!” said Winslow sulkily. “If you are going I am too.”

But Nelly was too quick for him; she sprang into the skiff, unwound the rope, and pushed off before he guessed her intention.

“I can row myself home and I mean to,” she announced, taking up the oars defiantly.