"Spin, spin, oh, golden thread,
He dreams of me night and day.
The poppy's chalice is sweet and red,
Oh, Love will find a way."
She was still humming it this morning when she came out of the back door, ready to start to school, and her thoughts were full of the play.
"Joyce," she remarked, critically, pausing to watch her sister put more wood on the camp-fire and poke the clothes in the boiler with the end of an old broom-handle, "you look like the witch in the play:
"'On the fire
I'll pile my faggots higher and higher,
And in the bubbling water stir
This hank of hair, this patch of fur.
Bubble and boil, and snake-skin coil!
This charm shall all plans but the Ogre's foil.'"
Joyce laughed, and Mary, slipping through the bars, followed Holland across lots to school. "I do feel like a witch in this old dress and sunbonnet," she said, "and I must look like one. But no one ever comes here in the mornings but Phil, and he has had his orders to stay away on Mondays."
"What is the use of worrying about how you look?" asked Jack. "Nobody expects a fellow to play Chinese laundryman with a high collar and kid gloves on."
Sousing the tubful of clothes into the rinse-water, Joyce went on vigorously with her morning's work. She and Jack relapsed into busy silence as the morning wore on, and when the clock struck eleven, neither had spoken for nearly an hour.
Suddenly a sound of wheels, coming rapidly along the road, and a child's high-pitched voice made them both stop and look up to listen. "Aren't we getting back-woodsy!" Joyce exclaimed, as Jack shook the suds from his arms, and ran to the corner of the kitchen to watch a buggy drive past. "So few people come out this desert road, that it is really an event to see any one. I suppose we ought not to be blamed for staring."
"It is Hazel Lee," said Jack. "I'm sure that's her voice. There must be some new boarders at the ranch, for there's a strange gentleman and a girl in the buggy with her, and she's standing up in front pointing out the country to them."