me twice! Well, thank goodness! it was
the Scoutmaster, not he, who played Jack
at a Pinch in Tory Cave."

And it was the Scoutmaster, in days
gone by, with the help of his boys, who had
built the great stone fireplace in the girls'
bungalow in which a brilliant Council
Fire was now blazing. Across the lake
the golden glory stole, and girls came tiptoeing
to the hearth-flame in soft, ceremonial
dress, fringed and beaded, the firelight,
like dawn, flushing the pearl of their
headbands,--and Pem forgot the enigma
of that eighteen-year-old youth who seemed
to have a trick of bobbing up, now and
again, under the lee of a summer holiday,
like some menacing spar to leeward of a
vessel in fair sail.

Well! to recall Stud's figure of speech,
nobody was "whistling jigs" to his milestone
heart now--or trying to. The fire
was the fiddler; and wax was not softer
or more responsive than the pliant breasts
on which its music fell.

[[175]]

p174 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p175w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p176

v?