of them murmured some[Pg 41] indistinct rejoinder and one of them, in the background, audibly giggled. Sally heard the giggle and flushed painfully. But Doris was superbly indifferent to it all.

[Pg 41]

"Do you dance, Sally?" she inquired, and Sally stammered that she did not.

"Then we'll go down to the river and paddle about awhile," went on Doris. "It's much nicer than stampeding about that hot parlor." The Campbell-Hobart crowd melted away. "Come on, Sally!" said Doris, and, linking arms with her new friend, she strolled down the steps to the river, without alluding, by so much as a single syllable, to the rudeness of that noisy, thoughtless group.

And in the heart of Sally Carter there sprang into being such an absolute idolatry of adoration for this glorious new girl friend that she was ready to lie down and die for her at a moment's notice. The last barrier, the last doubt, was swept completely away. And, as they drifted about in the fading after-glow, Sally remarked, apropos of nothing:

"If you like, we'll go up to Slipper Point[Pg 42] tomorrow, and—I'll show you—that secret!"

[Pg 42]

"Oh, Sally," breathed Doris in an awestruck whisper, "will you—really?"

[Pg 43]

[Pg 43]

 CHAPTER IV

ON SLIPPER POINT

It would be exaggeration to say that Doris slept, all told, one hour during the ensuing night. She napped at intervals, to be sure, but hour after hour she tossed about in her bed, in the room next to her mother, pulling out her watch every twenty minutes or so, and switching on the electric light to ascertain the time. Never in all her life had a night seemed so long. Would the morning ever come, and with it the revelation of the strange secret Sally knew?

Like many girls of her age, and like many older folks too, if the truth were known, Doris loved above all things, a mystery. Into her well-ordered and regulated life there had never entered 

 Prev. P 19/90 next