“I’d rather he would,” sighed Ruth.  “You are all so good to me and I—­am making a dreadful lot of trouble for you all the time, though I don’t mean to and I love you so.”

“It isn’t your fault, Ruthie, not a single speck of it.  Oh, yes.  I mean just what you mean.  Not simply Larry’s being so foolish as to lose his temper about this little thing, but the whole big thing of your caring for each other.  It is all hard and mixed up and troublesome; but you are not to blame, and Larry isn’t to blame, and it will all come out right somehow.  It has to.”

As soon as Ted had assured himself that Ruth was all right in his sister’s charge he had looked about for Larry.  Sue was perched on a table eating marshmallows she had purloined from somewhere with Phil Lambert beside her, but there was no Larry to be seen.

Ted stepped outside the pavilion.  He was honestly sorry his brother was hurt and angry.  He realized too late that maybe he hadn’t behaved quite fairly or wisely in capturing Ruth like that, though he hadn’t meant any harm, and had had not the faintest idea Larry would really care, care enough to be angry as Ted had not seen him for many a long day.  Larry’s temper had once been one of the most active of the family skeletons.  It had not risen easily, but when it did woe betide whatever or whomever it met in collision.  By comparison with Larry’s rare outbursts of rage Tony’s frequent ebullitions were as summer zephyrs to whirlwinds.

But that was long past history.  Larry had worked manfully to conquer his familiar demon and had so far succeeded that sunny Ted had all but forgotten the demon ever existed.  But he remembered now, had remembered with consternation when he saw the black passion in the other’s face as they met on the floor of the dance hall.

Puzzled and anxious he stared down the slope toward the water.  Larry was just stepping into the canoe.  Was he going home, leaving Ruth to the mercies of the rest of them, or was he just going off temporarily by himself to fight his temper to a finish as he had been accustomed to do long ago when he had learned to be afraid and ashamed of giving into it?  Ted hesitated a moment, debating whether to call him back and get the row over, if row there was to be, or to let him get away by himself as he probably desired.

“Hang it!  It’s my fault.  I can’t let him go off like that.  It just about kills him to take it out of himself that way.  I’d rather he’d take it out of me.”

With which conclusion Ted shot down the bank whistling softly the old Holiday Hill call, the one Dick had used that day on the campus to summon himself to the news that maybe Larry was killed.

Larry did not turn.  Ted reached the shore with one stride.

“Larry,” he called.  “I say, Larry.”

No answer.  The older lad picked up the paddle, prepared grimly to push off, deaf, to all intents and purposes to the appeal in the younger one’s voice.