Boots frankly admitted it:  “Besides,” he said, “if the Lawn people are so anxious for you to give them first say in the matter I don’t see why we shouldn’t have faith in it—­enough, I mean, to be good to ourselves by offering to be good to you, Phil.”

“Wait until Austin comes down—­and until I’ve tried one or two new ideas,” said Selwyn.  “Nothing on earth would finish me quicker than to get anybody who trusted me into a worthless thing.”

“It’s plain,” observed Boots, “that although you may have been an army captain you’re no captain of industry—­you’re not even a non-com.!”

Selwyn laughed:  “Do you really believe that ordinary decency is uncommon?”

“Look at Long Island,” returned Boots.  “Where does the boom of worthless acreage and paper cities land investors when it explodes?”

Gerald had flushed up at the turn in the conversation; and Selwyn steered Lansing into other and safer channels until Gerald went away to find a rod.

And, as Drina had finished her French lesson, she and Lansing presently departed, brandishing fishing-rods adorned with the gaudiest of flies.

* * * * *

The house and garden at Silverside seemed to be logical parts of a landscape, which included uplands, headlands, sky, and water—­a silvery harmonious ensemble, where the artificial portion was neither officiously intrusive nor, on the other hand, meagre and insignificant.

The house, a long two-storied affair with white shutters and pillared veranda, was built of gray stone; the garden was walled with it—­a precaution against no rougher intruder than the wind, which would have whipped unsheltered flowers and fruit-trees into ribbons.

Walks of hardened earth, to which green mould clung in patches, wound through the grounds and threaded the three little groves of oak, chestnut, and locust, in the centres of which, set in circular lawns, were the three axes of interest—­the stone-edged fish-pond, the spouting fountain, and the ancient ship’s figurehead—­a wind-worn, sea-battered mermaid cuddling a tiny, finny sea-child between breast and lips.

Whoever the unknown wood-carver had been he had been an artist, too, and a good one; and when the big China trader, the First Born, went to pieces off Frigate Light, fifty years ago, this figurehead had been cast up from the sea.

Wandering into the garden, following the first path at random, Selwyn chanced upon it, and stood, pipe in his mouth, hands in his pockets, surprised and charmed.

Plunkitt, the head gardener, came along, trundling a mowing-machine.

“Ain’t it kind ’er nice,” he said, lingering.  “When I pass here moonlight nights, it seems like that baby was a-smilin’ right up into his mamma’s face, an’ that there fish-tailed girl was laughin’ back at him.  Come here some night when there’s a moon, Cap’in Selwyn.”

Selwyn stood for a while listening to the musical click of the machine, watching the green shower flying into the sunshine, and enjoying the raw perfume of juicy, new-cut grass; then he wandered on in quest of Miss Erroll.