“Ugh!” ejaculated Mrs. Tramlay. “Poison-ivy leaves, you know, are the clearest crimson in the fall,” Phil continued, “and they’re so large and grow so close together that they make a bit of woods look like a splendid sunset.” “Oh, papa!” exclaimed Lucia, clapping her hands, “let’s go out to Haynton to-morrow, just for two or three days.” “Lucia,” said her mother, severely, “you forget all your engagements for the next few days.” “Her father’s own child,” said Tramlay. “She forgets everything but the subject before her. She would make a good business-man--if she weren’t a girl.” “I saw some couples out canoeing at Mount Desert, last season,” drawled Marge. “It seemed to me dreadfully dangerous, as well as very uncomfortable for the lady.” “Oh, our canoe wasn’t one of those wretched little things; was it, Phil? ’Twas a great long pond-boat, made of beech bark----” “Birch,” suggested Phil. “Birch bark, and so heavy that I couldn’t upset it, though I tried my hardest.” “Lucia!” The voice was Mrs. Tramlay’s, of course. “Why, mamma, the water wasn’t knee-deep; I measured it with the paddle.” Mrs. Tramlay sank back in her chair, and whispered that if the family ever went to the country again she would not dare leave that child out of her sight for a single instant, but she had hoped that a girl twenty years of age would have enough sense not to imperil her own life. As for that farmer fellow, she had supposed he was sensible enough to---- “You wouldn’t have tried that trick if I had been in the canoe, Miss Tramlay,” said Phil. “Why not?” asked Lucia: she knew how to look defiant without ceasing to be pretty. “Well, I would have been responsible for you, you know,--your instructor in navigation, so to speak; and it’s one of the first principles of that art not to take any risk unless something’s to be gained by it.” “Good!” exclaimed Tramlay. “Not bad,” assented Marge. “But I’d have got something if I’d succeeded in upsetting the boat,” said Lucia: “I’d have got a ducking.” Then everybody laughed,--everybody but Mrs. Tramlay, who intimated to Marge that Lucia was simply being ruined by her father’s indulgence. The dinner ended, the host and Marge retired to the library to smoke. Phil was invited to accompany them, but Lucia exclaimed,-- “Phil has been too well brought up to have such bad habits. He is going to keep me from feeling stupid, as ladies always do while gentlemen smoke after dinner.” She took Phil’s arm and led him to the drawing-room, where the young man soon showed signs of being more interested in the pictures on the wall than in the girl by his side. “These are very different from the pictures you used to see in our little parlor in Haynton,” said Phil. “Different from any in our town, in fact.” “Are they?” said Lucia. “But you might be loyal to home, and insist that yours were unlike any in New York; because they were, you know.” “I didn’t suppose they were anything unusual,” said Phil, quite innocently.