“Nice!” ejaculated Dick, “Huyler and Maillard and Whitman and Lowney, all rolled into one big candy man, never dreamed of anything so sweet. Did you really think I was disrespectful? Why, little Lena!”
Easter morning dawned, a God-given splendor of blue and spring softness, and the six stood, after breakfast, on the veranda and looked at the day.
“Time and the world are before you. Choose how you will spend the forenoon,” said Mrs. Lenox.
“I should like to drive,” Lena promptly replied. “Mr. Lenox was telling me last night about his new pair of horses. I know he is pining to show them off.”
She cast one of her most fascinating glances at her unmoved host.
“Just the thing. How shall we divide up?” And Mrs. Lenox looked vaguely around.
“Miss Elton and I,” said Norris boldly, “are going to row, just as we used last summer.”
Madeline glanced sidewise at him with some astonishment, as he made this radical statement, but although she pondered a moment, she offered no objection. Dick also glanced at him longingly as he said “last summer”. Our lives seem made of little bits that have small relation with each other. Things just happen. And yet, when we look back over a long stretch we realize that life is a coherent whole, that it leads somewhere, and Dick’s life had led a long way in the past year. So he too became grave but said nothing, as he resigned himself to a back seat beside Mrs. Lenox and watched Lena perched airily beside her host.
“Now I hope that matter will be amicably settled,” Mrs. Lenox began, looking with a satisfied air at the two unmarried people who were starting toward the boat-house.
“What!” Dick exclaimed with a sudden start.