It was nearly five o'clock when Leslie and Hilda emerged from the woods with their supply of roasting sticks. They had gone about their task in the most leisurely fashion, mutually animated by a curious half complacent acceptance of each other's presence. Merely being together had become such a complete yet informal delight that neither of them stopped to analyse it at all. And yet, if their hands chanced to brush, or, as happened once when a bee threatened, she laid her hand a little clutchingly on his shoulder, the emotion quickened. They hadn't much to say to each other, although a good deal of talk, such as it was, passed between them. Neither could remember afterward anything that was said. And all they had intrinsically to show for their afternoon was an armful of roasting sticks.

"Where shall we keep them until it's time?" asked Hilda, as they tramped through the sand and up to the screened porch.

He gazed dreamily off to sea.

"Les?" she repeated, quaintly drawling.

"Hm?"

"What shall we do with the sticks? Leave them[Pg 211] here? Or do you want to take them down where the fire's going to be?"

"Oh," he said at last, "I don't care." And he let himself down slowly on to the steps. "I feel so dreamy I can hardly move. Did you ever feel like that, Hilda?"

"Yes, many times," she replied, sitting down one step above him and clasping her knees. Her canvas hat was tossed aside, and the hair on her forehead was a little damp. There ensued a long, drowsy silence. At length she said: "I hope we cut enough, Les."

He was still gazing off across the sea, which the declining sun was making flash in a splendid and quite dazzling way. It was merely a warm, hypnotic stare, and he really saw nothing at all; yet he was faintly conscious of things—above all, he was conscious of a feeling of simple young happiness.

"Les?"

"Hm?"

"You do think we cut enough, don't you?"

"Sure, I guess so."

"It would be so funny," she laughed, "if there didn't happen to be enough to go round and some had to just sit and watch the others eat!"

"Most of them do that anyway, don't they?" he murmured. "I mean they sit there and watch you work like a slave, and then swallow everything that's poked in front of their mouths. I guess all roasts are alike."

[Pg 212]

"Well, anyhow, we won't feed any of the lazybones tonight, Les. We'll eat our own! I'll feed you, and you feed me. Will you?"

He glanced up at her and smiled. Then he slid down a step and lay back, resting his head against the step on which she sat, a little to one side.

"You look quite different upside down," he volunteered.

"How, Les?"

"Oh—I don't know. Your eyes look so funny!"

"Yours do, too!"

He thrust a sun-browned arm over his eyes and crossed his legs. It was she who now gazed off over the blazing waves. Not exactly a classic tableau. You would never mistake them for Romeo and Juliet. And yet our little ubiquitous friend Eros viewed the picture not without a smouldering, an incipient satisfaction.

Louise came out of the living room door on to the porch. She could see Hilda's head and shoulders, and she crossed over to the screen door at the top of the flight. Hilda looked round quickly.

"Oh, hello, Lou!"

Louise nodded, and made motions of salutation with her lips. There was no sound, however. She cleared her throat—tried to smile.

Leslie drew himself hurriedly into a more dignified posture. "Hello," he smiled, rising a trifle uneasily.

"Just see how many we got!" cried Hilda, [Pg 213]jumping up and gathering the roasting sticks in her arms.

Louise stood there looking down through the screen door. "You certainly got enough!" she exclaimed, a little shrilly—the result of her trying so desperately to be perfectly natural.

"Well," Hilda went on, "you see I kept finding little trees so straight we simply couldn't pass them by. And Leslie just kept cutting. See how sharp they are?"

Leslie, as though availing himself of the invitation (regardless of its not having been exactly addressed to him) placed a finger on one of the smoothly whittled points and withdrew it with a small, oddly juvenile howl of mock distress. The wounded finger went into his mouth. Leslie was certainly not at his ease.

Suddenly Hilda ran up close to her sister and asked, in a very low voice: "Have you been crying?"

Louise's heart jumped. "Why, no," she replied.

"It must be the sun in your eyes," said Hilda.

"Yes, it must be." And she turned away from them and sat in the same chair her mother had occupied when she had demanded of Alfred if he thought she might be growing old. Louise rocked slowly, just as her mother had rocked. Yet her thoughts rushed madly to and fro. There was a battle of ghosts in her heart.

Aunt Marjie came out breezily, accompanied by[Pg 214] Mr. O'Donnell, who was about to take his departure. The parent Needhams stood side by side in the cottage doorway, hospitably bowing, but seeming to realize, with a kind of fineness, that they should come no further, and that the very last rites must be performed by the lady for whose sake he had been asked.

Mr. O'Donnell extended a hand of farewell to Louise, who rose.

"Oh, are you going?" she asked.

"Yes—simply have to. They'll decide at the Elmbrook that I'm lost, strayed, or stolen and will have a search party out!"

"Good-bye, Mr. O'Donnell," said Hilda, prettily holding out her hand. She was deliciously unspoiled.

He held her hand a moment, looked from her over to Leslie, then at the bunch of sharpened sticks. And he brazenly winked at Miss Whitcom, who, glancing discreetly in the direction of her elder niece, remarked that there was likely to be a gorgeous sunset.

O'Donnell and Leslie shook hands. "See you again tonight?" asked the boy politely.

"Yes, indeed!" Mrs. Needham called out. "He's coming over to the roast."

"You'll have a devil—I mean, it's very dark in the woods............