was a little annoyed."

"I've lived a long time," said Cartwright. "However, perhaps it's
important I haven't forgotten I was young. I think your brother and
sister never were very young. They were soberer than me when I knew them
first."

"Mortimer _is_ a stick," Barbara agreed. "He and Grace have a calm
superiority that makes one savage now and then. I like human people, who
sometimes let themselves go--"

She stopped, and Cartwright noted her wandering glance that searched the
beach and the path to the hotel. He knew whom she expected, and thought
it would give her some satisfaction to quarrel with the fellow.
Cartwright did not mean to soothe her.

"Mr. Shillito ought to have sent his apologies when he found he could
not come," he said.

Barbara's glance got fixed, and Cartwright knew he had blundered.

"Oh!" she said, "now I begin to see! Mother kept me by her all the
evening; but mother's not very clever and Mortimer's too fastidious to
meddle, unless he gets a dignified part. Of course, the plot was yours!"

Cartwright nodded. Sometimes he used tact, but he was sometimes brutally
frank.

"You had better try to console yourself with the Wheeler boys; they're
straight young fellows. Shillito is gone. He went by the car this