Bobby had explored most of it all before--the stump pastures, the wood-lots, the hills, the beach, the piers, the upper shifting downs of sand--but now he saw them for the first time because he was showing them to Celia. One day they made their way under tall beech woods, through a scrub of cedars, and found themselves on the edge of low bluffs overlooking the yellow shore and the blue lake. Long years after he could remember it vividly, and all the little details that belonged to it--the flash of the waters, the dip of gulls, the gentle wash of the quiet wavelets against the shore, the thin strip of dark wet sand that marked the extent of their influences, and, in a long curve to the blue of distance, the uneven waste of the yellow dry sand on which lay and from which projected at all angles countless logs, slabs and timbers cast up derelict by the storms of years. But at the time he was not conscious of noticing these things. In the darkness of his room that night all he remembered was Celia standing bright and fair against the shadow of ancient twisted cedars. VI THE LITTLE GIRL (CONTINUED) Every Saturday evening the Hotel Ottawa gave a hop in its dining room. Mrs. Carleton suggested that the Ordes dine with her, and afterward take in this function. The hop proper began at nine o'clock; but the floor for an hour before was given over to the children. Mrs. Orde accepted. Promptly at half-past six, then, they all entered the dining room. Bobby, living in the town, had never taken a meal there. He saw a high-ceilinged, large room, filled with small, square and round tables arranged between numerous, slender, white plaster pillars. At the base of each pillar were still smaller serving tables each supporting a metal ice-water pitcher. Two swinging doors at the far end led out. Tall windows looked into the grounds where the children had been in the habit of playing. People were scattered here and there eating. Statuesque ladies dressed in black, with white aprons, stood about or sailed here and there, bearing aloft in marvellous equilibrium great flat trays piled high with steaming white dishes. They swung corners in grand free sweeps, the trays tilted far sideways to balance centrifugal force; they charged the swinging doors at full speed, and when Bobby held his breath in anticipation of the crash, something deft and mysterious happened at the hem of their black skirts and the doors flew open as though commanded by a magic shibboleth. They were tall and short, slender and stout, dark and light, but they had these things in common--they all dressed in black and white, their hair was lofty and of exaggerated waterfall, and their expressions never altered from one of lazy-eyed, lofty, scornful ennui. To Bobby they were easily the leading feature of the meal.