Aunt Agatha groaned and rocking dolorously back and forth upon the porch
reviewed the calamitous possibilities of the journey.

But the restless young nomad on the road ahead, sniffing the rare, sweet
air of early summer, had already relegated the memory of her
long-suffering aunt to the forgotten things of civilization. For the
summer world, sweet with the scent of wild flowers, was very young, with
young leaves, young grass and flowering, sun-warm hedges, and beyond the
Sherrill place on the wooded hill, the sun flamed yellow through the
hemlocks.

"Oh, Johnny Jutes! Oh, Johnny Jutes!" sang the girl happily, with the
color of the wild rose in her sun-brown cheeks. "It's good--it's good to
be alive!"

With a chuckle of enthusiasm Johnny cracked his whip and opined that it
was.

Now even as the great green van rolled forth upon the country roads,
bound for an idyllic spot by the river where Diane had planned to camp a
week, two men appeared upon the wide, white-pillared Sherrill porch,
smoking and idly admiring the bluish hills and the rolling meadowlands
below bright with morning sunlight. To the east lay the silver glimmer
of a tree-fringed lake; beyond, a church spire among the trees and a
winding country road traveled by the solitary van of green and white.

"A singular conveyance, is it not, Poynter?" inquired the older man, his
careful articulation blurred by a pronounced foreign accent. Staring
intently at the sunlit road, he added: "Is it a common mode of
travel--here in America?"