Now why Diane's cheeks should blaze so hotly at this aristocratic claim of Mr. Poynter's, who may say? But certainly she glanced with swift suspicion at her tranquil guest, who met her eyes with supreme good humor, laughed and fell to whistling softly to himself. Despite a certain significant silence in the camp of his lady, Mr. Poynter smoked most comfortably, puffing forth ingenious smoke-rings which he lazily sought to string upon his pipestem and busily engaging himself in a variety of other conspicuously peaceful occupations. All in all, there was something so tranquil and soothing in the very sight of him that Diane unbent in spite of herself.
"If you'd only join a peace tribunal as delegate-at-large," she said, "you'd eliminate war. I meant to freeze you into going home. I do wish I could stay indignant!"
"Don't," begged Philip humbly. "I'm so much happier when you're not.
"There is another way of managing me," he said hopefully a little later. "I meant to mention it before--"
"What is it?" implored Diane.
"Marry me!"
"Philip!" exclaimed the girl with delicate disdain, "the moon is on your head--"
"Yes," admitted Philip, "it is. It does get me. No denying it. Doesn't it ever get you?"
"No," said Diane. "Besides, I never bumped my brain--"
"That could be remedied," hinted Philip, "if you think it would alter matters--"
Diane was quite sure it would not and later Philip departed for the hay-camp in the best of spirits. In the morning Diane found a conspicuous placard hung upon a tree. The placard bore a bombastic ode, most clever in its trenchant satire, entitled--"To a Wild Mosquito--by One who Knows!"
Since an ill-fated occasion when Mr. Poynter had found a neatly indited ode to a wild geranium written in a flowing foreign hand, his literary output had been prodigious. Dirges, odes, sonnets and elegies frequently appeared in spectacular places about the camp and as Mr. Poynter's highly sympathetic nature led him to eulogize the lowlier and less poetic life of the woodland, the result was frequently of striking originality.
Convinced that Mr. Poynter's eyes were upon her from the hay-camp, Diane read the ode with absolute gravity and consigned it to the fire.
The minstrel's attitude toward the hay-nomad might be one of subtle undermining and shrugging ridicule, but surely with his imperturbable gift of satire, Mr. Poynter held the cards!
Still another morning Diane found a book at the edge of her camp.
"I am dropping this accidentally as I leave," read the fly leaf in Philip's scrawl. "I don't want you to suspect my classic tastes, but what can I do if you find the book!"