"Why shouldn't you, if you feel like it? Of course, I'd know you didn't mean it. If you were describing me to somebody else, or in the book, you'd say, 'Um, yes; rather fetching; pretty enough to--' But we all like to be sugared a little now and then; and there's one thing you must always remember: a woman's dressing-glass can't talk. Are you ready? Open the window screen and drop the manuscript inside. It will be safe until we come back, and the _Clytie_ might be tempted to throw cold water on it if we should take it along. She's a wet little boat in a sea." This for the outsetting: light-hearted badinage, a fair summer afternoon, a zephyrish breeze coming in tiny cat's-paws out of the north-west, and a cloudless sky. At the landing-stage Griswold made himself useful, paying out the sea-line of the movable mooring buoy and hauling on the shore-line until the handsome little craft lay at their feet. Strictly under orders he made sail on the little ship, and when the captain had taken her place at the tiller he shoved off. For a little time the breeze was lightly baffling, and Griswold confessed that if he had been at the helm they would have gone ingloriously aground. But the small person in the correct yachting costume was an adept in boat handling, as she seemed to be in everything else; and when the sandy bottom was fairly yellowing under the _Clytie's_ counter, there was a quick juggling of the tiller, a deft haul at the sheet, and the big main-sail filled slowly to the rippling song of the little seas splitting themselves upon the catboat's sharp cut-water. Once clear of the shallow bay, the helmswoman laid the course up the lake; and Griswold, luxuriously lazy now that the working strain was off, stretched himself comfortably on the cockpit cushions which he had rummaged out of the cuddy cabin, and asked permission to light his pipe. The permission given and the pipe filled and lighted, he pillowed his head in his clasped hands and a great contentment, flowing into all the interstices and levelling all the inequalities, lapped him in its soothing flood. When the pipe had gone out there was joy enough left in the pure relaxation; in that and in the contemplation through half-closed eyelids of the pretty picture made by the tiller maiden braced in the stern-sheets, her shining hair breeze-blown and flying free under the captivating little yachting hat, and her eyes dancing....