Cecily met them at the gate the next afternoon. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come!" she cried. "I'm really very lonely. Miss Benedict is going to be away all the afternoon because she has some business to attend to. She says we can sit in the garden."
At this piece of news the girls' faces fell.
"Why, what's the matter?" questioned Cecily. "Don't you care to? I thought you'd be rather pleased."
"Indeed, it will be fine!" declared Marcia, striving to hide her disappointment at the news that Miss Benedict would not be visible that day. She and Janet had counted so positively on having one at least, of their vexed questions settled immediately that it was difficult to feel they must wait two or three days more. For on the morrow Cecily was to visit them, as they now spent alternate days in each others' houses, and the day after, Captain Brett had promised to take the three of them on a trip up the Hudson.
All that afternoon, however, Marcia and Janet were noticeably inattentive and absent-minded. Once Marcia, who was reading aloud to the others, stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and remained for three whole minutes gazing off at nothing. And at this, Cecily could contain her wonder no longer.
"Girls, are you, by any chance—annoyed at me?" she ventured. Marcia suddenly dragged herself back to the affairs of the moment.
"Of course not, deary. How could you think such a thing?" she declared heartily.
"Then something else is the matter," insisted Cecily. "You are worrying about something. I never knew you to act so strangely. Now tell me, aren't you?"
Marcia glanced uneasily at Janet. "Well, yes, we are," she admitted reluctantly. "But please don't ask us anything about it just yet, Cecily. Something that has come up lately seems kind of queer and—and unpleasant. But it may turn out all right in the end, so we don't want to tell you till we know positively."