"Why, so am I. I hope we shall meet again."
"We shall," said George, confidently.
"How did you happen to fall in?"
"I was—er—I was looking at something in the water."
"I thought you were," said the girl, quietly.
George blushed.
"I know," he said, "it was abominably rude of me to stare like that; but"
"You should learn to swim," interrupted the girl. "I can't understand why every boy in the country isn't made to learn to swim before he's ten years old. And it isn't a bit difficult, really. I could teach you in a week."
The struggle between George and George's conscience was brief. The conscience, weak by nature and flabby from long want of exercise, had no sort of chance from the start.
"I wish you would," said George. And with those words he realized that he had definitely committed himself to his hypocritical rôle. Till that moment explanation would have been difficult, but possible. Now it was impossible.
"I will," said the girl. "I'll start to-morrow if you like." She waded into the water.
"We'll talk it over at the hotel," she said, hastily. "Here comes a crowd of horrid people. I'm going to swim out again."
She hurried into deeper water, while George, turning, made his way through a growing throng of goggling spectators. Of the fifteen who got within speaking distance of him, six told him that he was wet. The other nine asked him if he had fallen in.
Her name was Vaughan, and she was visiting Marvis Bay in company with an aunt. So much George ascertained from the management of the hotel. Later, after dinner, meeting both ladies on the esplanade, he gleaned further information—to wit, that her first name was Mary, that her aunt was glad to make his acquaintance, liked Marvis Bay but preferred Trouville, and thought it was getting a little chilly and would go indoors.
The elimination of the third factor had a restorative effect upon George's conversation, which had begun to languish. In feminine society as a rule he was apt to be constrained, but with Mary Vaughan it was different. Within a couple of minutes he was pouring out his troubles. The cue-withholding leading lady, the stick-like Mifflin, the funereal comedian—up they all came, and she, gently sympathetic, was endeavouring, not without success, to prove to him that things were not so bad as they seemed.
"It's sure to be all right on the night," she said.
How rare is the combination of beauty and intelligence! George thought he had never heard such a clear-headed, well-expressed remark.
"I suppose it will," he said, "but they were mighty bad when I left. Mifflin, for instance. He seems to think Nature intended him for a Napoleon of Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in new scenes for him. I couldn't stand it any longer. I just came away and left them to fight it out among themselves."
"I'm sure you have no need to worry. A play with such a good story is certain to succeed."
George had previously obliged with a brief description of the plot of "The Footpills."
"Did you like the story?" he said, tenderly.
"I thought it was fine."
"How sympathetic you are!" cooed George, glutinously, edging a little closer. "Do you know"
"Shall we be going back to the hotel?" said the girl.
Those noisome creatures, the hired murderers of "Fate's Footballs," descended upon Marvis Bay early next afternoon, and George, meeting them at the station in reluctant pursuance of a promise given to Arthur Mifflin, felt moodily that, if only they could make their acting one-half as full of colour as their clothes, the play would be one of the most pronounced successes of modern times. In the forefront gleamed, like the white plumes of Navarre, the light flannel suit of Arthur Mifflin, the woodenest juvenile in captivity.
His woodenness was, however, confined to stage rehearsals. It may be mentioned that, once the run of a piece had begun, he was sufficiently volatile, and in private life he was almost excessively so—a fact which had been noted at an early date by the keen-eyed authorities of his University, the discovery leading to his tearing himself away from Alma Mater by request with some suddenness. He was a long, slender youth with green eyes, jet-black hair, and a passionate fondness for the sound of his own voice.
