While he spoke, he was looking about the base of the rock, and by good fortune spied and pounced upon the bit of bright-colored ivory, which had rolled and rested itself against a hummock of sod.
"May I see it out?" he begged, approaching, and putting the piece upon the board. "You must have played a good deal," looking at Sue.
"We play often at home, my sister and I; and I had some good practice in"—There she stopped.
"In the hospital," said Martha, with the sharp little way she took up sometimes. "Why shouldn't you tell of it?"
"Has Miss Josselyn been in the hospitals?" asked Dakie Thayne, with a certain quick change in his tone.
"For the best of two years," Martha answered.
At this moment, seeing how Dakie was breaking the ice for them, up came Miss Craydocke and Leslie Goldthwaite.
"Miss Leslie! Miss Craydocke! This lady has been away among our soldiers, in the hospitals, half through the war! Perhaps—did you ever"—But with that he broke off. There was a great flush on his face, and his eyes glowed with boy-enthusiasm lit at the thought of the war, and of brave men, and of noble, ministering women, of whom he suddenly found himself face to face with one.
The game of chess got swept together. "It was as good as over," Martha Josselyn said. And these five sat down together among the rocks, and in half an hour, after weeks of mere "good-mornings," they had grown to be old friends. But Dakie Thayne—he best knew why—left his fragment of a question unfinished.