her command the dogs fell behind.

"Have you been here long?" Pauline asked.

"About two weeks. We were going further up the lake--just on a
sketching trip,--and we saw this house from the deck of the boat; it
looked so delightful, and so deserted and lonely, that we came back
from the next landing to see about it. We took it at once and sent for
a lot of traps from the studio at home, they aren't here yet."

Pauline looked her interest. It seemed a very odd, attractive way of
doing things, no long tiresome plannings of ways and means beforehand.
Suppose--when Uncle Paul's letter came--they could set off in such
fashion, with no definite point in view, and stop wherever they felt
like it.

"I can't think," Shirley went on, "how such a charming old place came
to be standing idle."

"Isn't it rather--run down?"

"Not enough to matter--really. I want father to buy it, and do what is
needed to it, without making it all new and snug looking. The sunsets
from that front lawn are gorgeous, don't you think so?"

"Yes," Pauline agreed, "I haven't been over there in two years. We
used to have picnics near there."

"I hope you will again, this summer, and invite father and me. We
adore picnics; we've had several since we came--he and I and the dogs.