now, and—yes, he was going to stop. He was swinging one leg out with that long movement that meant slowing up. She panted forward with a furtive glance back at the house. She hoped Mary Amber was looking at the turkey and not out of the window.

It seemed that her fingers had suddenly gone tired while she was writing her name in that boy’s book, and they[18] almost refused to tear open the envelope as the boy swung on his wheel again and vanished down the road. She had presence of mind enough to keep her back to the house and the telegram in front of her as she opened it covertly, trying to keep the attitude of still looking eagerly down the road, while the typewritten brief message got itself across to her tumultuous mind.

[18]

CONTENTS

“Impossible to accept invitation. Have other engagements. Thanks just the same.

“(Signed)

“(Signed)

“Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick.”

Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick

Miss Marilla tore the yellow paper hastily, and crumpled it into a ball in her hands as she stared down the road through brimming tears. She managed an upright position; but her knees were shaking under her, and a gone feeling came in her stomach. Across the sunset skies in letters of accusing size there seemed to blaze the paragraphs from The Springhaven Chronicle,[19] copied afterwards in the county Gazette, about Miss Marilla Chadwick’s nephew, Lieutenant Richard H. Chadwick, who was expected at his aunt’s home as soon as he landed in this country after a long and glorious career in other lands, and who would spend the week-end with his aunt, and “doubtless be heard from at the Springhaven Club House before he left.” Her throat caught with a queer little sound like a groan. Still, with her hand grasping the front gate convulsively, Miss Marilla stood and stared down the road, trying to think what to do, how to word a paragraph explaining why he did not come, how to explain to Mary Amber so that that look of sweet incredulousness should not come into her eyes.

[19]

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