“You’re almost too good to be true, Maro,” he said. “The funny part of it is, you’re real-all these cute little pruderies, I mean. You launch into philosophy to try to hide a certain confusion over finding yourself in a scant and marvelously becoming bathing suit with a member of your own household. Oh, yes, I know what started you off! And it jars you so obviously even to hear the word ‘leg’ from a man’s lips that I am tempted to follow you about for a couple of days, calling out ‘Leg, leg’ at intervals and watching you blush.”

“I-well, I suppose I do appear prudish,” confessed his newly acquired relative. “I’m beginning to realize that from the way Mildred laughs at me and her friends smile. I guess I’ve drifted behind the times at Grandmother’s house, practically alone with her for the past seven years, ever since our parents died. Mildred was with Uncle Frank and Aunt Josephine, you know, and she had no prim governess bringing her up as I had. I don’t like to feel that I’m different from the rest of you in this lovely little colony on the lake. I’d rather be laughed at gently though, the way Mildred and the other girls do, than to feel that I’m a sort of a wet blanket, to see people constrained when I’m around, not feeling I’m one of them,” the maiden went on, warming to a subject which had evidently preoccupied her.

“I want to be liked, you see, and I don’t want to appear critical. But some of the things said and done all about me do fluster me and I can’t help showing it, I suppose. In our nice eyrie on the cliff over the beach I knew vaguely that times and ways were changing, especially among young people. But I had no idea-why, for instance, Grandmother would certainly have fainted if she’d seen Mildred calmly letting Gerard Crandall stroll into her boudoir while the pedicure man was busy on her feet. But nobody except me seemed to think a thing of it, and you only grinned and winked at me when you saw me get uncomfortable.