“She’s as unlike the girls of my day as one could imagine, and I do wish she wouldn’t drive about the country bareheaded, looking like a colt or a young Indian,” said Miss Rebecca pensively one morning, just after Mabel’s departure for the tennis-court. “But I must confess that she’s the life of the place, and we couldn’t get on without her now. I don’t think, though, that she has done three hours of solid reading since she entered the house. I call that deplorable.” “She’s a dear,” said Aunt Carry. “We haven’t been much in the way of seeing young girls of late, and Mabel doesn’t seem to me different from most of those who visit her. Twenty years ago, you remember, girls pecked at their food and had to lie down most of the time. Now they eat it. What I can’t get quite used to is the habit of letting young men call them by their first names on short acquaintance. In my time,” she added with a little sigh, “it would have been regarded as inconsistent with maidenly reserve. I’m sure I heard the young man who was here last night say, ‘I’ve known you a week now; may I call you Mabel?’” As to young men, be it stated, the subject of this conversation showed herself impartially indifferent. Her attitude seemed to be that boys were good fellows as well as girls, and should be encouraged accordingly. If they chose to make embarrassing speeches regarding one’s personal appearance and to try to be alone with one as much as possible, while such favoritism was rather a fillip to existence, it was to be considered at bottom as an excellent joke. Young men came and young men went. Mabel attracted her due share. Yet evidently she seemed to be as glad to see the last comer as any of his predecessors. Then occurred the second happening in the tranquil existence of the maiden ladies. One day at the end of the first summer, an easterly day, when the sky was beginning to be obscured by scud and the sea was swelling with the approach of a storm, Dan Anderson, the only son of his father, was knocked overboard by the boom while showing the heels of his thirty-foot knockabout to the hired boat of his neighbor, Miss Mabel Ripley. They were not racing, for his craft was unusually fast, as became a multi-millionaire’s plaything. Besides, he and the girl had merely a bowing acquaintance. The _Firefly_ was simply bobbing along on the same tack as the _Enchantress_, while the fair skipper, who had another girl as a companion, tried vainly, at a respectful distance, to hold her own by skill.