Everybody in the vicinity had heard about his experiments; everybody pretended interest, but few were sincere; and of the sincere, few were unselfishly interested—­his sister, Eileen, Drina, and Lansing—­and maybe one or two others.

However, the younger set, now predominant from Wyossett to Wonder Head, made up parties to visit Selwyn’s cottage, which had become known as The Chrysalis; and Selwyn good-naturedly exploded a pinch or two of the stuff for their amusement, and never betrayed the slightest annoyance or boredom.  In fact, he behaved so amiably during gratuitous interruptions that he won the hearts of the younger set, who presently came to the unanimous conclusion that there was Romance in the air.  And they sniffed it with delicate noses uptilted and liked the aroma.

Kathleen Lawn, a big, leisurely, blond-skinned girl, who showed her teeth when she laughed and shook hands like a man, declared him “adorable” but “unsatisfactory,” which started one of the Dresden-china twins, Dorothy Minster, and she, in turn, ventured the innocent opinion that Selwyn was misunderstood by most people—­an inference that she herself understood him.  And she smiled to herself when she made this observation, up to her neck in the surf; and Eileen, hearing the remark, smiled to herself, too.  But she felt the slightest bit uncomfortable when that animated brunette Gladys Orchil, climbing up dripping on to the anchored float beyond the breakers, frankly confessed that the tinge of mystery enveloping Selwyn’s career made him not only adorable, but agreeably “unfathomable”; and that she meant to experiment with him at every opportunity.

Sheila Minster, seated on the raft’s edge, swinging her stockinged legs in the green swells that swept steadily shoreward, modestly admitted that Selwyn was “sweet,” particularly in a canoe on a moonlight night—­in spite of her weighty mother heavily afloat in the vicinity.

“He’s nice every minute,” she said—­“every fibre of him is nice in the nicest sense.  He never talks ‘down’ at you—­like an insufferable undergraduate; and he is so much of a man—­such a real man!—­that I like him,” she added naively; “and I’m quite sure he likes me, because he said so.”

“I like him,” said Gladys Orchil, “because he has a sense of humour and stands straight.  I like a sense of humour and—­good shoulders.  He’s an enigma; and I like that, too. . . .  I’m going to investigate him every chance I get.”

Dorothy Minster liked him, too:  “He’s such a regular boy at times,” she explained; “I do love to see him without his hat sauntering along beside me—­and not talking every minute when you don’t wish to talk.  Friends,” she added—­“true friends are most eloquent in their mutual silence.  Ahem!”

Eileen Erroll, standing near on the pitching raft, listened intently, but curiously enough said nothing either in praise or blame.

“He is exactly the right age,” insisted Gladys—­as though somebody had said he was not—­“the age when a man is most interesting.”