Diane of the Green Van

"Help!" murmured Philip.

"Can you add anything to that?" demanded Diane politely.

Philip laughed. Diane, delicately sarcastic, was irresistible.

"There is the bullet--" he reminded gravely.

"Please!" begged Diane faintly.

Philip flushed with a sense of guilt.

"Well," he owned, "I have bothered you a lot about it, that's a fact! But it sticks so in my mind. There's something else--"

"Yes?" said Diane discouragingly.

"Didn't you tell me yesterday that you'd had a feeling some one had been spying on your camp?"

"Yes," said Diane in serious disapproval. "I did. I get seizures of confidential lunacy once in a while. Are you going to fuss about that?"

"No," said Philip gently. "But the knife and the bullet and that have made me wonder--a lot. After all," he regretted sincerely, "my notions are very vague and formless, but I feel so strongly about them that--urging my friendship for Carl as my sole excuse for unasked advice to his cousin--"

"Yes?"

Philip laid aside his pipe with a sigh. The crisp music of his lady's voice was not encouraging.

"I do hope you'll forgive me," he said quietly, "but I'm going to urge you to abandon your trip to Florida!"

"Mr. Poynter!" flashed Diane indignantly. "The bump on your head has had a relapse. Better let Johnny go for the doctor again."

"I know I'm infernally presumptuous," acknowledged Philip flushing, "but I'm terribly in earnest."

Diane's eyes, wide, black, rebuking, scanned his troubled face askance.

"I ought to be exceedingly angry," she said slowly, "and if it wasn't for the bump, like as not I would be--but I'm not."

"I'm truly grateful," said Philip with a sigh of relief. And added to himself, "Philip, old top, you're in for it."

"Why," exclaimed Diane, "I've never been so happy in my life as I have been here by this beautiful river!"

"Nor I!" said Philip truthfully.

Diane did not hear.

"Every wild thing calls," she went on, impetuously. "It always has. Fish--bird--wild flower--the smell of clover--the hum of bees--I can't pretend to tell you what they all mean to me. Even as a youngster I frightened my aunt half to death by running away to sleep in the forest. I'm sorry I'll ever have to go back to civilization!"

"And yet," insisted Philip inexorably, "to me it seems that you should go back--to-morrow!"

"I do seem to feel a stir of temper!" said Diane reflectively. "Maybe I'd better go back and look at supper. You can come after you're through pelting that frog."

"There's still another reason," said Philip humbly, "which I can't tell you. Indeed, I ought not mention it. I can only beg you to take it on trust and believe that it's another forcible argument against your trip. Somehow, everything in my mind weaves into a gigantic warning. So disturbing is the notion," added Philip unquietly, "that--"