Marian turned a bright, friendly glance on her cousin, who answered, undisturbed, "I didn't treat her very badly, Cousin Henry. Does she look as if I had?"
"Oh, Father," Marian interrupted, serious now, "she had the most awful time with me! I know it, Lucy, so there's no use in your laughing. I wouldn't go out or do anything she or Cousin Sally wanted. I sat and moped until they almost gave me up as a bad job. But Lucy just decided it would be doing her bit, I guess, to make me act like other people, because she kept on, and the first thing I knew I began to like going around with other girls myself."
Marian had never expressed herself like this before, and Lucy, pleased in her heart at having her hard efforts appreciated, thought with surprise, as she had already done more than once, that Marian was keener than any one gave her credit for.
"Lucy, I suppose you don't wish me to thank you," began Mr. Leslie, speaking so much more in earnest than Lucy had expected that she exclaimed hastily:
"Oh, mercy, no, Cousin Henry! What on earth for? We must turn off across the grass here, if you want to walk on the sea-wall. If we go out there first the men will all be at drill when we get back, and then we can go inside the fort."
Mr. Leslie watched Lucy's face as she spoke, with a sudden, sharp contraction of his kind heart. The fresh color in her cheeks, which he had once envied for Marian, had paled during the last few weeks. The twinkling, hazel eyes, which he remembered so full of life and merriment were serious and sad as she raised them to his, and in every look and gesture he saw and understood the weight of anxiety that pressed upon her. She was cheerful enough, and most people might have seen little difference, but Mr. Leslie had observing eyes. "Poor little girl," he thought pityingly. "Poor old Bob, too,—hard luck."
"Father, you aren't looking at anything," said Marian reproachfully. "Here's the aviation field—see it? We get to the sea-wall right here. It's not quite so cold to-day, do you think so, Lucy?"
"Not while we're in the sun. We come out here in all sorts of weather, Cousin Henry, and sometimes Marian feels as though life on Governor's Island were a sort of Arctic Expedition."
"Except that she got back from it in fairly good shape," said Mr. Leslie, throwing back his head to laugh in a jolly way he had. "I can believe it took a good bit of coaxing to get her out here at first."
"You bet it did," agreed Marian, shivering reminiscently. "It does still, when the wind blows. We came out here once when Julia had to hold her puppy for fear he'd be blown off, and I rebelled and said I wouldn't stay."