"Exercise isn't everything, though, Lucy," Julia objected. "We aren't trying to make a prize-fighter out of her. She's a lot stronger than she was, except for getting tired so easily. What I think she needs is company."
"That's what I think," agreed Lucy, warmly. "She ought to go with a crowd of girls who would persuade her into doing as they did. But you haven't any idea how hard it is to make her go out on these cold days, or take the trouble to go to see any one. I simply have to drag her out for the little walks we take, and you know how short they are. If I took her around the whole post I think we'd have to stop at the hospital. The other day I brought her in after a 'long walk'—at least she was pretty tired—and we had walked so slowly I had to run around and around the house to warm up, after she had gone in."
"She does poke along," said Julia laughing. "But, Lucy, somehow I can't help being interested in her, and wanting to get her well."
"That's just it," said Lucy quickly. "I'm so glad you feel that way too. No matter how mad and provoked she makes me, I like her and I like being with her. Now that she talks and feels at home with us I'm never dull with her. She can tell no end about queer things and places she's seen, and whatever you talk about she's sure to understand."
"Anne Matthews likes her, I know," said Julia thoughtfully. "There's certainly nothing slow about Marian when it comes to learning lessons. If she waked up as much to other things we'd have a hard time keeping up with her."
Lucy was thinking over this conversation on a cold, sunny afternoon a week before Thanksgiving, when the three girls had gone out on the sea-wall for their walk, to look at the deep blue water, which had already begun to form into thin ice along the base of the rocks. Marian loved the changing waves, with which two voyages across the ocean had made her very familiar, and the easiest way to coax her out-of-doors after school on blustery days was to suggest a glimpse at the white-capped breakers, where the new land lately added to the island had led the sea-wall far out into the bay.
Marian was warmly dressed in a soft, fur-trimmed coat, with a blue, woolly cap pulled down over her ears. Her delicate cheeks were bright pink and her hair, tossed about by the keen wind, blew in gleaming curls across her face. She looked filled with health and good spirits as she laughed and pushed her hair out of the way, her bright, untroubled eyes roaming over the foamy, blue water. Lucy looked at her with critical admiration, deciding on another effort to help along her cousin's growing willingness to take part in other girls' pleasures.
"I have an idea, Julia and Marian," she began, sure of Julia's support. "You know your mother, Julia, wants us to get as many girls as we can, to-morrow afternoon, to come to the Red Cross and finish up those clothes for the French orphans. What do you say to my inviting them all to our house afterward, to play games and have ice-cream? Margaret loves to make it and we wouldn't have cake—just cookies or something. It might help to get the girls together."
"It's a fine idea," said Julia, with a vigorous nod. "There are about a dozen girls, I think, if you ask all on the post from sixteen down to twelve. What do you think of it, Marian?"
"All right," agreed Marian, mildly interested.