“Does the fool mean he is sick, I wonder,” he cogitated.  “Lord, I wish I could let well enough alone.  But this sword of Damocles business is beginning to get on my nerves.  I have half a mind to take a run into town this afternoon and see the old reprobate.  I’ll bet he doesn’t know as much as he claims to, but I’d like to be sure before he dies.”

Just then Tony Holiday entered, clad in a rose hued linen and looking like a new blown rose herself.

“You are the latest ever,” greeted Carlotta.

“On the contrary I have been up since the crack of dawn,” denied Tony, slipping into a seat beside her friend.

Carlotta opened her eyes wide.  Then she understood.

“You got up to see Dick off,” she announced.

“I did.  Please give me some strawberries, Hal, if you don’t mean to eat the whole pyramid yourself.  I not only got up, but I went to the station; not only went to the station, but I walked the whole mile and a half.  Can anybody beat that for a morning record?” Tony challenged as she deluged her berries with cream.

Alan Massey uttered a kind of a snarling sound such as a lion disturbed from a nap might have emitted.  He had thought he was through with Carson when the latter had made his farewells the night before, saying goodnight to Tony before them all.  But Tony had gotten up at some ridiculously early hour to escort him to the station, and did not mind everybody’s knowing it.  He subsided into a dense mood of gloom.  The morning had begun badly.

Later he discovered Tony in the rose garden with a big basket on her arm and a charming drooping sun hat shading her even more charming face.  She waved him away as he approached.

“Go away,” she ordered.  “I’m busy.”

“You mean you have made up your mind to be disagreeable to me,” he retorted, lighting a cigarette and looking as if he meant to fight it out along that line if it took all summer.

Tony snipped off a rose with her big shears and dropped it into her basket.  It rather looked as if she were meaning to snip off Alan Massey figuratively in much the same ruthless manner.

“Put it that way, if you like.  Only stay away.  I mean it.”

“Why?” he persisted.

Thus pressed she turned and faced him.

“It is a lovely morning—­all blue and gold and clean-washed after last night’s storm—­a good morning.  I’m feeling good, too.  The clean morning has got inside of me.  And when you come near me I feel a pricking in my thumbs.  You don’t fit into my present, mood.  Please go, Alan.  I am perfectly serious.  I don’t want to talk to you.”

“What have I done?  I am no different from what I was yesterday.”

“I know.  It isn’t anything you have done.  It isn’t you at all.  It is I who am different—­or want to be.”  Tony spoke earnestly.  She was perfectly sincere.  She did want to be different.  She had not slept well the night before.  She had thought a great deal about Holiday Hill and Uncle Phil and her brothers and—­well, yes—­about Dick Carson.  They all armed her against Alan Massey.