"Sh! Sh!" warned Miss Priscilla, and tiptoed across the kitchen. When she had looked from a window and seen her boarder's sweater and tam proceeding among the grassy hummocks toward the sea, she returned, bringing out the materials for Philip's operations on the fish. "I'll bring a rhetoric instead of finny denizens of the deep, the next time I come," he continued, settling to his job. Miss Priscilla took her boarder's deserted seat on the doorstep. "Going to open a young ladies' seminary here, and got the teacher all secured?" "Nothing of the kind, Phil, and there's only one explanation of her," declared Miss Priscilla impressively. "You've been in art galleries and seen these statues of Venus and Apollo and all that tribe?" "I have." "Well, sir, all I can think of is that one o' their Dianas got down off her perch some dark night, and managed to get hold o' some girl clothes, and came here to this island. She _says_ she has come to recuperate from unwise vigils caused by vaulting ambition at school. I said it over to myself till I learned it." "_I_ should say her trouble might be indigestion from devouring dictionaries," remarked Philip. "Well, anyway, she's a sweet girl and it's all as natural as breathing to her. At first I accused her in my own mind of affectation, but, there! she hasn't got an affected bone in her body, and she's willin' and simple as a child. You'd ought to 'a' seen her luggin' water up the hill for me this mornin'. That reminds me. You promised to give me a lift this summer when I needed it." "At so much a lift," remarked Philip. "Of course. Well, the first thing I want you to do is to get the carpenter and the plumber and knock their heads together, and then bring 'em here, one in each hand, so's I can have my house ready when the folks come. Why, my new stove ain't even put up. Mr. Buell, the plumber, promised me faithful he'd come this mornin'. I'm cookin' on an old kerosene stove there was here and managin' to keep Miss Wilbur from sheer starvation." "Miss Wilbur? Is that the fair Diana? Where did you get the 'old master'? Did she find you waiting when she got off the pedestal?" "No, I found her waiting. She came to the island on a misunderstandin'. There wasn't any one ready so early in the season to make strangers comfortable, and it seems she took a fancy to this place and I found her here sittin' on the steps when I arrived. She said she had been on the island a week and had walked up to this piazza every pleasant day, and she'd like to live here." "Did she really say it as plain as that?" "Well--I don't suppose those were her exact words, but she made me understand that she was willin' to come right in for better or for worse just so's she could have a room up there in front where the dawn--yes, she said something about the dawn, I forget whether it was purple or rosy--" "Mottled, perhaps," suggested Philip.