was only a nickname.
"So I won't be able to hear Day bragging about his golf score. What sort of a picnic?"
"It's a peach of an idea!" Ferd said. "It came to me out of a clear sky. Every picnic we've ever had has been a failure—because why? Because they were husband-and-wife picnics. There's no trouble about a picnic where nobody's married, is there?"
"Humph! What's the peach of an idea? To get divorces?"
"Certainly not! Have husbands and wives—only somebody else's husband or somebody else's wife. You and I—do you see?—and Annette and Tom; Jane Henderson and Emerson Riley; Catherine Fredericks and that fellow who's visiting the Moores. How about it?"
"Day would have a convulsion, Ferd."
"Good gracious, Fanny!" he said. "Haven't you any imagination? What has Day got to do with it? You wouldn't tell him, of course!"
Well, that was different. I was rather scared when I got to thinking of it, but it sounded amusing and different. One way and another I see such a lot of Day. He's always around unless there's a golf tournament somewhere else.
"It's moonlight," Ferd said. "The only thing, of course, is to get off. I can stay over at the club or go on a motor trip. It's easy enough for the fellows; but the girls will have to work out something."
So we sat and thought. Day came in from the links just then and stopped by my chair.
"Great afternoon!" he said, mopping his face. "Y'ought to hear what I did to Robson, Fan—I drove off my watch and never touched it. Then he tried it with his. Couldn't even find the case!"
"Go away, Day," I said. "I'm thinking."
"Ferd doesn't seem to interfere with your thinking."
"He's negative and doesn't count," I explained. "You're positive."
That put him in a good humour again and he went off for a shower. I turned to Ferd.
"I believe I've got it," I said—"I'll have a fight with Day the morning of the picnic and I'll not be there when he gets home. I've done it before. Then, when I do go home, he'll be so glad to see me he'll not ask any questions. He'll think I've been off sulking."
"Good girl!" said Ferd.
"Only you must get home by ten o'clock—that's positive. By eleven he'd be telephoning the police."
"Sure I will! We'll all have to get home at reasonable hours."
"And—I'm a wretch, Ferd. He's so fond of me!"
"That's no particular virtue in him. I'm fond of you—and that's mild, Fan; but what's a virtue in Day is a weakness in me, I dare say."
"It's an indiscretion," I said, and got up. Enough is a sufficiency, as somebody said one day, and I did not allow even Ferd to go too far.
Annette and Jane and Catherine were all crazy about it. Annette was the luckiest, because Charles was going for a fishing trip, and her time was her own. And Ferd's idea turned out to be perfectly bully when the eight of us got together that evening and talked it over while the husbands were shooting crap in the grill room.
"There's an island up the river," he explained, "where the men from our mill have been camping; and, though the tents are down, they built a wooden pavilion at the edge of the water for a dining hall—and, of course, that's still there. We can leave town at, say, four o'clock and motor up there—you and Tom, Annette and——"
"I've been thinking it over, Ferd," I put in, "and I won't motor. If the car goes into a ditch or turns over you always get in the papers and there's talk. Isn't there a street car?"
"There's a street car; but, for heaven's sake, Fanny——"
"Street car it is," I said with decision. "With a street car we'll know we're going to get back to town. It won't be sitting on its tail lamp in a gully; and we won't be hiding the license plates under a stone and walking home, either."
There was a lot of demur and at first Annette said she wouldn't go that way; but she came round at last.
"I'll send a basket up late in the afternoon," Ferd said, "with something to eat in it. And you girls had better put on sensible things and cut out the high heels and fancy clothes. If you are going in a street car you'd better be inconspicuous."
That was the way we arranged it finally—the men to take one car and the girls another and meet opposite the island on the river bank. We should have to row across and Ferd was to arrange about boats. We set Thursday as the day.
Some sort of premonition made me nervous—and I was sorry about Day too; for though the picnic was only a lark and no harm at all, of course he would have been furious had he known. And he was very nice to me all the week. He sent flowers home twice and on Wednesday he said I might have a new runabout. That made it rather difficult to quarrel with him Thursday, as I had arranged.
I lay awake half the night trying to think of something to quarrel about. I could not find anything that really answered until nearly dawn, when I decided to give him some bills I had been holding back. I fell asleep like a child then and did not waken until eleven o'clock. There was a box of roses by the bed and a note in Day's writing.
"Honey lamb!" he wrote: "Inclosed is a telegram from Waite calling me to Newburyport to the tournament. I'll hardly get back before to-morrow night. I came to tell you, but you looked so beautiful and so sound asleep I did not have the heart to waken you. Be a good girl! Day."
Somehow the note startled me. Could he have had any suspicion? I felt queer and uneasy all the time I was dressing; but after I had had a cup of tea I felt better. There is nothing underhanded about Day. He has no reserves. And if he had learned about the picnic he would have been bleating all over the place.
The weather was splendid—a late summer day, not too warm, with a September haze over everything. We met at the hairdresser's and Jane Henderson was frightfully nervous.
"Of course I'm game," she said, while the man pinned on her net; "but my hands are like ice."
Catherine, however, was fairly radiant.
"There's a sort of thrill about doing something clandestine," she observed, "that isn't like anything else in the world. I feel like eloping with Mr. Lee. You'll all be mad about him. He's the nicest thing!"
Mr. Lee was the Moores' guest.
I had got into the spirit of the thing by that time and I drew a long breath. Day was safely out of the way, the weather was fine, and I had my hair over my ears the way Ferd liked it.
II
Everything went wonderfully—up to a certain point. Have you ever known it to fail? Everything swims along and all is lovely—and the thing, whatever it may be, is being so successful that it is almost a culmination; and then suddenly, out of a clear sky, there is a slip-up somewhere and you want to crawl off into a corner and
