Chapter XVII
Cope Among Cross-Currents
Next morning, at breakfast, Amy Leffingwell kept, for the most part, a rapt and meditative eye on her plate. Hortense gave her now and then an impatient, half-angry glare, and had to be cut short in some stinging observations on Cope. "But it was foolish," Medora Phillips felt obliged to concede. "What in the world made you do it?"
But Amy continued to smile at the table-cloth. She seemed to be intimating that there was a special folly which transcended mere general folly and approximated wisdom.
After breakfast she spoke a few words to Carolyn. She had had all night to think the matter over; she now saw it from a new angle and in a new light.
"You should have seen how he shook himself free from that sail, and all," she said. "And while we were swimming in he held his hand under my chin—at least part of the time. And when we reached the sandbars he put his arm through mine and helped me over every one." And in this state of mind she went off to her class.
Cope was received by his own class with a subdued hilarity. His young people felt that he had
shown poor judgment in going out on the water at
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