cabin; and then the others came; the Minsters built gorgeous Brookminster—­you can just make out their big summer palace—­that white spot beyond Surf Point!—­and then the Lawns came and built Southlawn; and, beyond, the Siowitha people arrived on scout, land-hungry and rich; and the tiny hamlet of Wyossett grew rapidly into the town it now is.  Truly this island with its hundred miles of length has become but a formal garden of the wealthy.  Alas!  I knew it as a stretch of woods, dunes, and old-time villages where life had slumbered for two hundred years!”

He fell silent, but she nodded him to go on.

“Brooklyn was a quiet tree-shaded town,” he continued thoughtfully, “unvexed by dreams of traffic; Flatbush an old Dutch village buried in the scented bloom of lilac, locust, and syringa, asleep under its ancient gables, hip-roofs, and spreading trees.  Bath, Utrecht, Canarsie, Gravesend were little more than cross-road taverns dreaming in the sun; and that vile and noise-cursed island beyond the Narrows was a stretch of unpolluted beauty in an untainted sea—­nothing but whitest sand and dunes and fragrant bayberry and a blaze of wild flowers.  Why”—­and he turned impatiently to the girl beside him—­“why, I have seen the wild geese settle in Sheepshead Bay, and the wild duck circling over it; and I am not very aged.  Think of it!  Think of what this was but a few years ago, and think of what ‘progress’ has done to lay it waste!  What will it be to-morrow?”

“Oh—­oh!” she protested, laughing; “I did not suppose you were that kind of a Jeremiah!”

“Well, I am.  I see no progress in prostrate forests, in soft-coal smoke, in noise!  I see nothing gained in trimming and cutting and ploughing and macadamising a heavenly wilderness into mincing little gardens for the rich.”  He was smiling at his own vehemence, but she knew that he was more than half serious.

She liked him so; she always denied and disputed when he became declamatory, though usually, in her heart, she agreed with him.

“Oh—­oh!” she protested, shaking her head; “your philosophy is that of all reactionaries—­emotional arguments which never can be justified.  Why, if the labouring man delights in the harmless hurdy-gurdy and finds his pleasure mounted on a wooden horse, should you say that the island of his delight is ‘vile’?  All fulfilment of harmless happiness is progress, my poor friend—­”

“But my harmless happiness lay in seeing the wild-fowl splashing where nothing splashes now except beer and the bathing rabble.  If progress is happiness—­where is mine?  Gone with the curlew and the wild duck!  Therefore, there is no progress. Quod erat, my illogical friend.”

“But your happiness in such things was an exception—­”

“Exceptions prove anything!”

“Yes—­but—­no, they don’t, either!  What nonsense you can talk when you try to. . . .  As for me I’m going down to the Brier Water to look into it.  If there are any trout there foolish enough to bite at those gaudy-feathered hooks I’ll call you—­”