Diane of the Green Van

"Johnny," said he cheerfully, "has been good enough to invite me to stay in camp with him indefinitely. I'm his guest, in fact, until you go home. I imagine that as Johnny's guest I ought to enjoy immunity from sarcastic shafts, but I may be mistaken. I've washed and drained most of these worms. Will you lend me an inch or so of that stout invertebrate climbing out of the can by you?"

Thoroughly out of patience, Diane reeled in her line and returned to camp, whence she presently heard Philip blithely whistling a fisherman's hornpipe and urging Nero to retrieve certain sticks he had thrown into the river. A little later he caught a sunfish and swung into camp with such a smile of irresistible pride and good humor on his sun-browned face, that Diane laughed in spite of herself.

"How ridiculous it is!" she mused uncomfortably. "Here I may not depart for fear a happy-go-lucky young man will play a tin whistle on the steps of the van, and I will not go home. What in the world am I to do with him? Are you an orphan?" she asked with guileful curiosity.

"No," said Philip.

"I'm sorry," said Diane maliciously. "For then I could take out papers of adoption--"

"I'll stay without them," promised Philip. And Diane added wood to the fire with cheeks like the scarlet sunset.

"I'm going to send for my aunt," she announced a few days later.

"Yes?" said Philip.

"Unconventionality of any sort shocks her dreadfully. Like as not she'll faint dead away at the sight of you domiciled in my camp as if you own it. She'll see that you go."

"Better not," advised Philip.

"Why?"

"I'll produce credentials proving I'm a reputable victim of circumstances. I'll suggest that in complete concurrence with her I deem it unsafe for a young and attractive girl to tour about the country--and that I do not feel that I can conscientiously depart. Between the two of us you'll likely have a most uncomfortable hour or so."

Aunt Agatha was impressionable. It needed but a spark of concurrence to arouse her dreadfully. Diane dismissed the project.

"I think," she said hopefully, "that you'll most likely go to-night."

"In any circumstances," said Philip easily, "I fear that would be impossible. Johnny's behind with the laundry and I haven't a collarable shirt." Whereupon he whistled for Nero and set off amiably through the woods to gather an inaccessible flower he knew his lady would prize.

By nine that night Diane was asleep in the van. Philip, with whom she had indignantly crossed swords a little earlier, lay thoughtfully by the fire watching the snowy curtains of the van windows billowing lazily in the warm night wind. He felt restless and perturbed and presently sought his tent, where he lit the bottled candle to look for the predecessor of his insatiable wildwood pipe, but halted suddenly with a peculiar whistle.