"She's not much older than you," said Pritchard. "If I'd never seen you, I'd say that she was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. But she's gentler and meeker than even you'd be in her boots. She isn't self-reliant and able." "You talk as if you'd been in love with her yourself." "I? I thought I was talking as if I was in love with you." "Looks like it, don't it?" said she. "Spending all your time with a girl's brother." "Not doing what you most want to do," said Pritchard, "is sometimes thought knightly." "Do you know," she said critically, "sometimes I think you really like me a lot. And sometimes I think that I really like you. The funny thing is that it never seems to happen to both of us at the same time. There's Arthur looking for you. Do me a favor--shake him and come for a tramp with me." "I can't," said Pritchard simply. "I've promised. But to-morrow----" "_Certainly not_," said she. XII Warm weather and the real opening of the season arrived at the same time. The Camp hummed with the activities and the voices of people. And it became possible for the Darlings to withdraw a little into their shells and lead more of a family life. As Maud said: "When there were more proprietors than guests, we simply had to sail in and give the guests a good time. But now that the business is in full blast, we mustn't be amateurs any more." Langham, Renier, and the future Earl of Merrivale remained, of course, upon their well-established footing of companionship, but the Darlings began to play their parts of innkeepers with the utmost seriousness and to fight shy of any social advances from the ranks of their guests. Indeed, for the real heads of the family, Mary, Maud, and Eve, there was serious work to be done. For, to keep thirty or forty exigent and extravagant people well fed, well laundered, well served, and well amused is no frisky skirmish but a morning-to-night battle, a constant looking ahead, a steady drain upon the patience and invention. In Sam Langham Mary found an invaluable ally. He knew how to live, and could guess to a nicety the "inner man" of another. Nor did he stop at advice. Being a celebrated _bon viveur_ he went subtly among the guests and praised the machinery of whose completed product they were the consumers and the beneficiaries. He knew of no place, he confided, up and down the whole world, where, for a sum of money, you got exactly what you wanted without asking for it. "Take me for an example," he would say. "I have never before been able to get along without my valet. Here he would be a superfluity. I am 'done,' you may say, better than I have ever been able to do myself. And I know what I'm talking about. What! You think the prices are really rather high. Think what you are getting, man--think!" Among the new guests was a young man from Boston by the name of Herring. He had written that he was convalescing from typhoid fever and that his doctor had prescribed Adirondack air.