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She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a collapsed fish in the sunshine. "It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to rehearse." "In the water?" asked her father uneasily. "Certainly." As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in the canoe.
Whether there was in them some sporting instinct, making hazard attractive, or, perhaps, a conviction that Fate is kind, need not be discussed. The fact remains that there were a very few youthful and marriageable folk who had no desire to know beforehand what their fate might be. One of these unregenerate reactionists was Flavilla.
My condition was soon known, and I was no longer admitted by the father of Flavilla. I repeated the protestations of regard, which had been formerly returned with so much ardour, in a letter which she received privately, but returned by her father's footman.
Returning from this exercise of his trade he saw Bella descending the stair with a plate. "With all your going on over Flavilla," she told him, "it never came to you that she'd like a piece of steak." "But Doctor Frazee told us nothing solid. I took her up two eggs in the morning." "Yes, and you'd had two dollars to pay as well if I hadn't showed you different.
And that, in these times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard. But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume.
The other stopped, a man with a lean face, heavy curved nose and penetrating gaze behind large spectacles. He was in reality a veterinary, but Lemuel Doret, out of a profound caution, had discovered him to be above the narrow scope of local prejudice. "I wish you'd look at Flavilla," Doret continued. The doctor hesitated, and then turned shortly in at the sidewalk.
Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water's edge, hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders. As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was to sing in her rôle of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
I felt not much pleasure from the civilities for which I knew myself indebted to my uncle's industry, till, by one of the invitations which every day now brought me, I was induced to spend a week with Lucius, whose daughter Flavilla I had often seen and admired like others, without any thought of nearer approaches.
The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth. There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the gravelly shores of Northport.
"I could have warned you of all that," June Bowman asserted; "for the reason they're narrow, don't know anything about living or affairs; hypocritical too; long on churchgoing " Doret regarded him solemnly. How blind he was, a mound of corruptible flesh! He put the beer down and turned abruptly away, going up to Flavilla. She seemed better; her face was white but most of the fever had gone.