A Fool There Was | Page 8

at Jack Schuyler. At which he blushed and almost carromed the trap against a telegraph pole. Whereat they all laughed. And from then on, they were themselves.
They were met by her mother at "The Lawns," and by Dr. DeLancey. Dr. DeLancey was not bashful. He pinched her glowing cheek and looked her over, critically.
"A positive symposium of pulchritude," he declared. "I wish I were fifty or seventy-five years younger, by Jove! If you two boys let any rank outsider take her out of the family, you'll have me to reckon with. Yes, by Jove, you will! And you'll find that while I may be a poor fencer, and a worse boxer, I'm still a good spanker!"

[Illustration]
CHAPTER SIX.
AN ACCIDENT.
Dr. DeLancey, sitting under the awning of the after deck of "The Idlesse," and gazing out upon the sound where Jack Schuyler, Tom Blake and Kathryn Blair were defying the laws of nature in a thirty foot knockabout, much to the unspoken anxiety of two fathers and the spoken fear of three mothers, again voiced this thought on the following evening.
"The prettiest, sweetest, finest, loveliest child I ever knew, by Jove," he declared; then, bowing, "present company, of course, excepted.... Yes, sir. If you two old ninnies don't force your sons to marry her, I'll take it into my own hands, damme if I don't, by Jove!"
"But they can't both marry her," protested the widow of Jimmy Blair, placing her arm about the baby brother that had turned out to be a sister.
The Doctor waved his hand, loftily.
"A mere detail," he asserted. "As long as one of 'em marries her, that fixes it, doesn't it? And it doesn't make any difference which one; they're equally fine boys, both of 'em. Look at 'em. Did you ever see better shoulders--better shaped heads--better carriages? Mighty dashed handsome boys, too, they are--get it from their mothers," he bowed elaborately to Mrs. Jon Stuyvesant Schuyler and to Mrs. Thomas Cathcart Blake, then added a look of contempt for, and at their husbands. "Yes, sir," he went on, "they're fine boys, two of 'em--no denying that. And she--she's the right sort--no frills, or airs, or bluffs. Sensible, natural. If I'd have had a few more patients like them, I'd have starved to death long ago. Why, they didn't have even a single measle--not one whooping cough out of the lot. Disgraceful!"
In the meanwhile, far out on the sound, the little knockabout was heeling far over in the playful breath of the summer breeze. Tom Blake, bare- headed, bare-armed, was at the tiller. Jack Schuyler, also bare-headed and bare-armed, sat on the after overhang, tending the sheet, and bracing muscular legs against the swirling seas that, leaping over the low freeboard, tried to swirl him off among them. Kathryn Blair, leaned lithely against the weather rail, little, white--canvas-shod feet braced, skirts whipping about her slender body, rounded arms gripping the wet edge of the cockpit rail. The gold-brown hair, in loosened strands, whipped across her tanned cheek; her gown, open at the throat, revealed a glimpse of straight, perfectly-poised throat; her lips were parted and her breath came fast in the excitement of it.
Blake held the knockabout to its course, with the confidence of youth in his prowess, against them. The little boat leaped forward from crest to crest, stopping between to shake the water from its deck. Above was the blue sky--all about them the blue water, white crested.
The girl, bracing herself against a particularly hard pitch of the boat, balancing herself lightly, as the craft recovered and again leaped forward, cried:
"Isn't this fine!"
Blake nodded. Schuyler, waist deep in a swooping sea, did not hear... The Long Island shore was close at hand now.
Suddenly Blake shouted: "Hard a lee!" and jammed the tiller over; Schuyler, on the after overhang, scrambled fast to take in the slack of the sheet. Kathryn Blair bent, to avoid the swinging boom.
The little boat swung about as though on a pivot. The wind filled the sail; she sped forward like a hawk unhooded.
Then something happened. A stay parted; there was a great, grinding crack, followed by the snapping and whipping of canvas. And the mast fell.
Schuyler was knocked over into the water by the boom. It struck him fair upon the brow. Kathryn, springing to catch him, was hit by the flapping canvas. She went overboard, too, and under the sail.
Blake, on the weather side, was free from the wreck. Without even stopping to turn, he dove backward from the cockpit. Under the cold, green water he went. He struck out, blindly, frenziedly. His hand felt something that was not canvas and yet was cloth--struck, and gripped. Then, holding his breath still until he thought his lungs would burst, he felt his way out from under the sail. The rail of the boat