And now, pale and thin with close, lonely work, the time had come to her at last when it was right to take a respite; when everybody said it must be; when Uncle David, just home from Japan, had put his hand in his pocket and pulled out three new fifty-dollar bills, and said to them in his rough way, "There, girls! Take that, and go your lengths." The war was over, and among all the rest here were these two women-soldiers honorably discharged, and resting after the fight. But nobody at Outledge knew anything of the story.
There is almost always at every summer sojourn some party of persons who are to the rest what the mid-current is to the stream; who gather to themselves and bear along in their course—in their plans and pleasures and daily doings—the force of all the life of the place. If any expedition of consequence is afoot, they are the expedition; others may join in, or hold aloof, or be passed by; in which last cases, it is only in a feeble, rippling fashion that they go their ways and seek some separate pleasure in by-nooks and eddies, while the gay hum of the main channel goes whirling on. At Outledge this party was the large and merry schoolgirl company with Madam Routh.
"I don't see why," said Martha Josselyn, still looking out, as the "little red" left the door of the Green Cottage,—"I don't see why those new girls who came last night should have got into everything in a minute, and we've been here a week and don't seem to catch to anything at all. Some people are like burrs, I think, or drops of quicksilver, that always bunch or run together. We don't stick, Susie. What's the reason?"
"Some of these young ladies have been at Madam Routh's; they were over here last evening. Sin Saxon knows them very well."
"You knew Effie Saxon at school, too."
"Eight years ago. And this is the little one. That's nothing."
"You petted her, and she came to the house. You've told her stories hundreds of times. And she sees we're all by ourselves."
"She don't see. She doesn't think. That's just the whole of it."
"People ought to see, then. You would, Sue, and you know it."
"I've been used to seeing—and thinking."