"Only you must get home by ten o'clock--that's positive. By eleven he'd be telephoning the police." "Sure I will! We'll all have to get home at reasonable hours." "And--I'm a wretch, Ferd. He's so fond of me!" "That's no particular virtue in him. I'm fond of you--and that's mild, Fan; but what's a virtue in Day is a weakness in me, I dare say." "It's an indiscretion," I said, and got up. Enough is a sufficiency, as somebody said one day, and I did not allow even Ferd to go too far. Annette and Jane and Catherine were all crazy about it. Annette was the luckiest, because Charles was going for a fishing trip, and her time was her own. And Ferd's idea turned out to be perfectly bully when the eight of us got together that evening and talked it over while the husbands were shooting crap in the grill room. "There's an island up the river," he explained, "where the men from our mill have been camping; and, though the tents are down, they built a wooden pavilion at the edge of the water for a dining hall--and, of course, that's still there. We can leave town at, say, four o'clock and motor up there--you and Tom, Annette and----" "I've been thinking it over, Ferd," I put in, "and I won't motor. If the car goes into a ditch or turns over you always get in the papers and there's talk. Isn't there a street car?" "There's a street car; but, for heaven's sake, Fanny----" "Street car it is," I said with decision. "With a street car we'll know we're going to get back to town. It won't be sitting on its tail lamp in a gully; and we won't be hiding the license plates under a stone and walking home, either." There was a lot of demur and at first Annette said she wouldn't go that way; but she came round at last. "I'll send a basket up late in the afternoon," Ferd said, "with something to eat in it. And you girls had better put on sensible things and cut out the high heels and fancy clothes. If you are going in a street car you'd better be inconspicuous." That was the way we arranged it finally--the men to take one car and the girls another and meet opposite the island on the river bank. We should have to row across and Ferd was to arrange about boats. We set Thursday as the day. Some sort of premonition made me nervous--and I was sorry about Day too; for though the picnic was only a lark and no harm at all, of course he would have been furious had he known. And he was very nice to me all the week. He sent flowers home twice and on Wednesday he said I might have a new runabout. That made it rather difficult to quarrel with him Thursday, as I had arranged. I lay awake half the night trying to think of something to quarrel about. I could not find anything that really answered until nearly dawn, when I decided to give him some bills I had been holding back. I fell asleep like a child then and did not waken until eleven o'clock. There was a box of roses by the bed and a note in Day's writing.