"And I don't ever remember to have been tired after a picnic at the old fort before."
"No more do I," said Lucy; and it was a moment before their sadness, as usual, trembled into laughter.
"Lucy Eastman," said Mary Leonard, suddenly, "this is the street that old Miss Pinsett used to live on—lives on, I mean. What do you say? Shall we stop and see Miss Pinsett?" The dimples had come back again, and her eyes danced.
Lucy caught her breath.
"Oh, Mary, if only she—" her sentence was left unfinished.
"I'll find out," said Mary Leonard, and put her head out of the window. "Driver," she called out, "stop at Miss Pinsett's."
The driver nodded and drove on, and she sank back pleased with her own temerity.
The cab stopped in front of the same square white house, with the cupola, and the same great trees in the front yard. Mary Leonard and Lucy Eastman clasped each other's hands in silent delight as they walked up the box-bordered path.
"Tell Miss Pinsett that Lucy Eastman and—and Mary Greenleaf have come to see her," they said to the elderly respectable maid. Then they went into the dim shaded parlor and waited. There were the old piano and the Japanese vases, and the picture of Washington which they had always laughed at because he looked as if he were on stilts and could step right across the Delaware, and they could hear their hearts beat, for there was a rustle outside the door—old Miss Pinsett's gowns always rustled—and it opened.
"Why, girls!" exclaimed old Miss Pinsett as she glided into the room.