"Thanks for coming," said Lucy as they passed through the outer room, where Sergeant Cameron stood rigidly at attention, only this time with no smile on his immovable face, as the young officer passed him to bid good-bye to the Gordons at the door.
"It's funny," Lucy thought on the way home, when William had run on ahead, finding his sister too quiet to be good company. "We want so much to do a lot to help, and we can do so little. Now I know they are surely going, for Mr. Harding would have denied it otherwise,—but I don't know just when."
An airplane from the aviation field at the far end of the island passed noisily overhead, and Lucy watched it wistfully, as it flew off toward Sandy Hook through the clear sky, with that mysterious longing to share in great adventures that sometimes stirs every normal fourteen-year-old heart. At last she gave a sigh and came down to earth, having bumped rather hard into some of the bushes by the General's gate-post, and made that gentleman smile curiously at her as he came out of his door.
"I'll go home and see how Marian is," she said, forgetting her puzzled thoughts and starting to run. "I guess that's all I'm good for."
Back at the house, Lucy found the piazza deserted and went inside and out to the kitchen, where the cook, who was Elizabeth's husband, Karl, told her that Mrs. Gordon had gone to take some jelly to Sergeant Cameron's wife, who had been ill several days.
"The little sick girl is up-stairs, I think, Miss Lucy. She not go with your mother, I know."
Lucy ran up-stairs and through her own room into Marian's. "Oh, here you are," she panted, breathless. "I've been wondering where you were. Aren't you coming out to parade?"
"Yes, I'm getting dressed now," said Marian, who was tying her curls with a blue ribbon as she stood before the glass in her petticoat. "Will you button my dress for me, Lucy? I was waiting for Elizabeth to come down from her room."
"Of course I will," said Lucy, taking the fine white frock laid on the bed and slipping it carefully over Marian's thin little shoulders. "Oh, Marian, you do look lovely!" she could not help exclaiming when she had finished the row of tiny buttons. "What a perfectly darling dress that is."