"Maybe it is sawt of childish," she thought as she opened the sandal-wood box and clasped the rosary around her neck. "But I don't care, if it will only help me to remembah not to be snippy and sensitive and to go about my business like that little black ant. It's funny how such a little thing started me on the right path."
When Alex came back she met him with such a shining face that he glanced at her curiously. "You look as if you had heard good news," he said as he helped her into the buggy. "What's happened?"
"Oh, nothing," she laughed. "I've just been practising my paht while I waited for you. I'm the Princess Olga, and I've gotten rid of my gown of tow, and I'm so relieved to find the real King's-daughtah attire, that I'm as happy as a June-bug."
He did not understand her allusion, but it would have made no difference if she had talked to him in Greek, with that charming dimple coming and going as she laughed. It was a pleasure just to sit and watch her, while she rattled on in her inimitable way about June-bugs, wondering how happy they were anyhow, and why people chose them as the unit of measurement when they were measuring joy.
Over at the spring while they waited for Lloyd to come, Miss Marks and Leland Harcourt experimented at picture-making with Gay for a victim. Stretched out on the rocks of the creek bank, with her hands lying in the shallow water and her hair streaming over her shoulders, she was obligingly trying to obey instructions to "look as wet and dead as possible."
Lloyd and Alex, coming on her unexpectedly as they picked their way up the ravine, having tied the horse where the woodland road ended, were horrified to find her lying there so limp and still. But the next instant Leland's voice sounded somewhere up among the bushes: "That's great, Pug. Try to keep the pose a little longer till we get one more plate. With a sea-gull and some rolling waves painted in in the background, it will be a perfect copy of that painting I saw in Brittany."
"Well, hurry, please!" called Gay plaintively. "I can't stand it much longer. The sun on my wet face is burning it to a blister, and the rocks are cutting my elbow, and I know it's a spider that's crawling over the back of my neck."
Lloyd gave a toot of the hunter's horn to warn them of their approach and the extra plate was never made. For with a little shriek the "Drowned Fishermaiden" scrambled up from the rocks in embarrassed haste, and when she caught sight of Alex, fled away into the bushes to gather up her dishevelled hair and otherwise put herself to rights. She was too agitated to notice Lloyd's meeting with Leland, but while she made herself presentable the sound of laughter floated in among the bushes to her most reassuringly.
"They're laughing at me," she thought, "but I don't care how ridiculous I looked. Anything to break the ice between them and put them on a friendly footing."