“No, ma’am,” the nephew replied courteously, “it’s a pipe.”

“Oh,” she murmured, “a pipe.”

He bent over his wooden cylinder, paring at it with a knife, delicately, with care. It was much cooler to-day. The sun had risen from out a serrated miniature sea, into a cloudless sky. For a while the yacht had had a perceptible motion—it was this motion which had roused her—but now it had ceased, although sizable waves yet came in from the lake, creaming whitely along the hull, and spent themselves shoaling up the beach toward a dark cliff of trees. She’d had no idea last night that they were so close to land, either. But distances always confused her by night.

She wished she’d brought a coat: had she anticipated such a cool spell in August . . . She stood huddling her scarf about her shoulders, watching his brown intent forearms and his coarse, cropped head exactly like his sister’s, mildly desiring breakfast. I wonder if he’s hungry? she thought. She remarked:

“Aren’t you rather chilly this morning without a coat?” He carved at his object with a rapt maternal absorption, and after a while she said, louder:

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to buy one?”

“I hope so,” he murmured . . . then he raised his head and the sun shone full into his opaque yellow-flecked eyes. “What’d you say?”

“I should think you’d wait until we got ashore and buy one instead of trying to make one.”

“You can’t buy one like this. They don’t make ’em.” The cylinder came in two sections, carved and fitted cunningly. He raised one piece, squinting at it, and carved an infinitesimal sliver from it. Then he returned it to its husband. Then he broke them apart again and carved an infinitesimal sliver from the other piece, fitted them together again. Miss Jameson watched him.

“Do you carry the design in your head?” she asked.

He raised his head again. “Huh?” he said in a dazed tone.

“The design you’re carving. Are you just carving from memory, or what?”

“Design?” he repeated. “What design?”

It was much cooler to-day.

.          .          .          .          .          .          .

There was in Pete’s face a kind of active alarm not quite yet dispersed, and clutching his sheet of newspaper he rose with belated politeness, but she said, “No, no: I’ll get it. Keep your seat.” So he stood acutely, clutching his paper, while she fetched a chair and drew it up beside his. “It’s quite chilly this morning isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” he agreed. “When I woke up this morning and felt all that cold wind and the boat going up and down, I didn’t know what we were into. I didn’t feel so good this morning, anyway, and with the boat going up and down like it was . . . it’s still now, though. Looks like they went in closer to the bank and parked it this time.”

“Yes, it seems to me we’re closer than we were last night.” When she was settled he sat also, and presently he forgot and put his feet back on the rail. Then he remembered and removed them.

“Why, how did you manage to get a paper this morning? Did we put in shore somewhere last night?” she asked, raising her feet to the rail.

For some reason he felt uncomfortable about his paper. “It’s just an old piece,” he explained lamely. “I found it downstairs somewhere. It kind of kept my mind off of how bad I felt.” He made a gesture repudiating it.

“Don’t throw it away,” she said quickly, “go on—don’t let me interrupt if you found something interesting in it. I’m sorry you aren’t feeling well. Perhaps you’ll feel better after breakfast.”

“Maybe so,” he agreed, without conviction. “I don’t feel much like breakfast, waking up like I did and feeling kind of bad, and the boat going up and down too.”

“You’ll get over that, I’m sure.” She leaned nearer to see the paper. It was a single sheet of a Sunday magazine section: a depressing looking article in small print about Romanesque architecture, interspersed with blurred indistinguishable photographs. “Are you interested in architecture?” she asked intensely.

“I guess not,” he replied. “I was just looking it over until they get up.” He slanted his hat anew: under cover of this movement he raised his feet to the rail, settling down on his spine. She said:

“So many people waste their time over things like architecture and such. It’s much better to be a part of life, don’t you think? Much better to be in it yourself and make your own mistakes and enjoy making them and suffering for them, than to make your life barren through dedicating it to an improbable and ungrateful posterity. Don’t you think so?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” Pete said cautiously. He lit a cigarette. “Breakfast is late to-day.”

“Of course you hadn’t. That’s what I admire about a man like you. You know life so well that you aren’t afraid of what it might do to you. You don’t spend your time thinking about life, do you?”

“Not much,” he agreed. “A man don’t want to be a fish, though.”

“You’ll never be a fish, Pete (every one calls you Pete, don’t they?—do you mind?) I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness—people and things that are compatible, love. . . . So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind. . . . May I have a cigarette? Thanks. You smoke this brand, too, I see. A m— Thanks. I like your hat: it just suits the shape of your face. You have an extremely interesting face—do you know it? And your eyes. I never saw eyes exactly the color of yours. But I suppose lots of women have told you that, haven’t they?”

“I guess so,” Pete answered. “They’ll tell you anything.”

“Is that what love has meant to you, Pete—deception?” she leaned to the match, staring at him with the humorless invitation of her eyes. “Is that your opinion of us?”

“Aw, they don’t mean anything by it,” Pete said in something like alarm. “What time do they have breakfast on this line?” He rose. “I guess I better run downstairs a minute before it’s ready. It oughtn’t to be long,” he added. Miss Jameson was gazing quietly out across the water. She wore a thin scarf about her shoulders: a webbed brilliant thing that lent her a bloodless fragility, as did the faint bridge of freckles (relict of a single afternoon of sunlight) across her nose. She now sat suddenly quiet, poising the cigarette in her long, delicate fingers; and Pete stood beside her, acutely uncomfortable—why, he knew not. “I guess I’ll go downstairs before breakfast,” he repeated. “Say”—he extended his newspaper—“why don’t you look it over while I’m gone?”

Then she looked at him again, and took the paper. “Ah, Pete, you don’t know much about us—for all your experience.”

“Sure,” he replied. “I’ll see you again, see?” and he went away. I’m glad I had a clean collar yesterday, he thought, turning into the companionway. This trip sure ought to be over in a couple of years. . . . Just as he began the descent he looked back at her. The newspaper lay across her lap but she wasn’t looking at it. And she had thrown the cigarette away, too. My God, Pete said to himself. Then he was struck by a thought. Pete, my boy, he told himself, it’s going to be a hard trip. He descended into the narrow passage. It swept forward on either hand, broken smugly by spaced mute doors with brass knobs. He slowed momentarily, counting doors to find his own, and while he paused the door at his hand opened suddenly and the niece appeared clutching a raincoat about her.

“Hello,” she said.

“Don’t mention it,” Pete replied, raising his hat slightly. “Jenny up, too?”

“Say, I dreamed you lost that thing,” the niece told him. “Yes, she’ll be out soon, I guess.”

“That’s good. I was afraid she was going to lay there and starve to death.”

“No, she’ll be out pretty soon.” They stood facing each other in the narrow passage, blocking it completely, and the niece said: “Get on, Pete. I feel too tired to climb over you this morning.”

He stood aside for her, and watching her retreat he called after her: “Losing your pants.”

She stopped and dragged at her hips as a shapeless fabric descended from beneath the raincoat and wadded slow and lethargic about her feet. She stood on one leg and kicked at the mass, then stooping she picked from amid its folds a man’s frayed and shapeless necktie. “Damn that string,” she said, kicking out of the garment and picking it up.

Pete turned in the narrow corridor, counting discrete identical doors. He smelled coffee and he added to himself: A hard trip, and, with unction: I’ll tell the world it is.