Letty, pained at a suggestion so palpably immodest, looked in frightened appeal to Caine. But Amzi was once more talking to people at the next table. So Miss Standish drew around her an aloofness that lifted her high above any ribaldry that might be bandied about her. “You’ve never been?” asked Jack in surprise, “You’ve missed a lot. There’s no other region just like the Adirondacks. It rains about a third of the time, as a rule. But when it’s clear you forget it can ever be anything else. The breath goes down a mile deeper into your lungs than it can in any other part of the world; and you never get tired. A sort of perpetual ozone jag. Almost any place there is worth going to. We generally hang out at the Antlers,--Mother and I. Up on Raquette Lake, you know. It’s different from other places. It’s run by Charlie Bennett, a giant of a man as broad as Mr. Conover and half a foot taller. He and Father are old chums from the time when it took three days to get into the wilderness and when you could shoot Adirondack bear for breakfast any morning. Bennett used to be Father’s guide in those days. Now, I suppose he could buy and sell Dad half a dozen times over.” “I _wish_ I could go there--or anywhere at all in the Adirondacks,” sighed Desirée wistfully. “I read once--” Caleb noted the longing inflection and made quick mental memorandum of it. “How big’s your cottage, Jack?” he asked the boy. “Four rooms. We get our meals at the hotel. Why?” “Oh, nothin’!” Continuing with elephantine humor, “Though maybe I might drop in on you sometime. How many of you goin’ to be there?” “Father can only stay a month this year. After that there will be only Mother and I. Did you really think of joining us? We’d be ever so glad. There’s an extra room.” “Much obliged. I’ve never took a vacation yet, an’ I guess I’m a little bit too old to begin. I don’t b’lieve in vacations. Neither would you if you could see how my clerks look when they get back from ’em. The first day back, you’d think they was beginnin’ a life sentence in prison. It costs ’em six months’ savin’s to grow a bunch of callous spots on their hands an’ tan on their faces that they could a’ got free of charge, workin’ in my freight yards. When d’you expect to go to the country, Miss Standish?” he broke off, remembering belatedly his new-chosen role of attentive swain, and turning unexpectedly upon Letty before she had an opportunity to resume the aloofness which she had just discarded as unnecessary. “I--I don’t quite know yet,” she made reply, unreasonably scared by his sudden glance, “We shall probably stay in town rather late this year.” “Good!” approved Caleb. “I hope we’ll see a lot of each other.”