mistress's attention held unduly by a chirping, bright-winged caucus of
birds of inferior size and interest, he barked and galloped off ahead.

When presently Diane emerged from the lake path and halted on the
shore, he was greatly excited.

There was an aeroplane upon the water and in the aeroplane a tall young
man with considerable length of sinewy limb, lazily rolling a
cigarette. Diane unconsciously approved the clear bronze of his lean,
burned face and his eyes, blue, steady, calm as the waters of the lake
he rode.

The aviator met her astonished glance with one of laughing deference
even as she marveled at his genial air of staunch philosophy.

"I beg your pardon," stammered Diane, "but--but are you by any chance
waiting--to be rescued?"

"Why--I--I believe I am!" exclaimed the young man readily, apparently
greatly pleased at her common sense. "At your convenience, of course!"

"Are you--er--sinking or merely there?"

"Merely here!" nodded the young man with a charming smile of
reassurance. "This contraption is a--er--I--I think Dick calls it an
hydro-aeroplane. It has pontoons and things growing all over it for
duck stunts and if the water wasn't so infernally still, I'd be
floating and smoking and likely in time I'd make shore. That's a
delightful pastime for you now," he added with a lazy smile of the
utmost good humor, "to float and smoke on a summer day and grab at the