She rose, holding out the glittering, finny garment, which flashed like a
collapsed fish in the sunshine.
"It's finished," she said. "Now I'm going off somewhere by myself to
rehearse."
"In the water?" asked her father uneasily.
"Certainly."
As Flavilla was a superb swimmer nobody could object. Later, a maid went
down to the landing, stowed away luncheon, water-bottles and costume in
the canoe. Later, Flavilla herself came down to the water's edge,
hatless, sleeves rolled up, balancing a paddle across her shoulders.
As the paddle flashed and the canoe danced away over the sparkling waters
of Oyster Bay, Flavilla hummed the threadbare German song which she was
to sing in her role of Lorelei, and headed toward Northport.
"The thing to do," she thought to herself, "is to find some nice, little,
wooded inlet where I can safely change my costume and rehearse. I must
know whether I can swim in this thing--and whether I can sing while
swimming about. It would be more effective, I think, than merely sitting
on the float, and singing and combing my hair through all those verses."
The canoe danced across the water, the paddle glittered, dipped, swept
astern, and flashed again. Flavilla was very, very happy for no
particular reason, which is the best sort of happiness on earth.
There is a sandy neck of land which obstructs direct navigation between
the sacred waters of Oyster Bay and the profane floods which wash the
gravelly shores of Northport.
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