"Do you begin to feel lonesome?" laughed Loraine softly, as she and T.O. sat on the steps in the dark. "Thinking of being left all alone in the Hive, I mean? The rest of us begin to feel lonesome, thinking of being left out! We had a grist of good times all together, didn't we? Remember the little 'treats' when you always brought home olives, and Billy sage cheese? Laura Ann used to change about—sometimes eclairs, sometimes sauerkraut! Always sardines for me. Oh, do you remember the treat with a capital 'T,' when we had ice cream and angel cake? And Billy wanted to divide the hole so as not to waste anything—there, I don't believe you've heard a word I said!"
She had not, for she was not there. Loraine put out her hand in the darkness, but could not find her. She had slipped away unceremoniously.
She was down in the road, walking fast and hard. The battle was on again.
"I thought I had it all decided—I did have! Why do I have to decide it over again?" she was saying stormily to herself. "I said I'd do it, and I'm going to do it—what am I down here fighting in the dark for?" But still she fought on.
It was so still about her, and with all her girl's heart she longed for noise again—car-bells and rattling wheels and din of men's voices. There were such wide spaces all about, and she longed for narrow spaces—for rows on rows of houses and people coming and going. It was the city-blood in her asserting itself. She had had her breath of space and freedom and green, growing things, and exulted in it while it lasted. Now she pined for her native streets. But all the sympathy and gratitude in her went out to the little old woman who was coming home to a lonely home—whose one dream-child was dead.
No one had ever really needed her before—to be needed appealed to her strongly. And in the short time between her own coming to Placid Pond and the coming of the other girls, a bond of real affection had been established between Mrs. Camp and herself.
But hadn't she been over all this before? Long ago she had decided what to do. Now, suddenly, she wheeled in the dark road and went hurrying in the other direction. She would go back to Loraine on the doorstep, and laugh and talk. She had decided "for good."
The stars came trooping out, and she lifted her face to them with a new sense of peace. They were such friendly, twinkling little stars.
T.O. was humming a lilty little tune when she came up the path in the starlight and joined Loraine again on the doorstep.
The other two girls were coming slowly back from the little country post office, both to hurry and have the pleasant walk over. Billy had been saying nice things about the portrait of Amelia they had found hanging on the wall.