Not even yet was she absolutely certain that Doris was as utterly friendly as she seemed. Though she scarcely acknowledged it to herself, she was dreading and fearing that this new, absorbing friendship could not last. When the summer had advanced and there were more companions of Doris’s own kind in Manituck, it would all come to an end. She would be forgotten or neglected, or, perhaps even snubbed for more suitable acquaintances. How could it be otherwise? And how could she disclose her most precious secret to one who might later forsake her and even impart it to some one else? No, she would wait.
In the meantime, while Doris was growing rosy and brown in the healthful outdoor life she was leading with Sally, Sally herself was imbibing new ideas and thoughts and interests in long, ecstatic draughts. Chief among all these were the books—the wonderful books and magazines that Doris had brought with her in a seemingly endless amount. Sometimes Doris could scarcely extract a word from Sally during a whole long morning or afternoon, so deeply absorbed was she in some volume loaned her by her obliging friend. And Doris also knew that Sally sat up many a night, devouring by candle-light the book she wanted to return next day—so that she might promptly replace it by another!
One thing puzzled Doris,—the curious choice of books that seemed to appeal to Sally. She read them all with equal avidity and appeared to enjoy them all at the time, but some she returned to for a second reading, and one in particular she demanded again and again. Doris’s own choice lay in the direction of Miss Alcott’s works and “Little Lord Fauntleroy” and her favorites among Dickens. Sally took these all in with the rest, but she borrowed a second time the books of a more adventurous type, and to Doris’s constant wonder, declared Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” to be her favorite among them all. So frequently did she borrow this, that Doris finally gave her the book for her own, much to Sally’s amazement and delight.
“Why do you like ‘Treasure Island’ best?” Doris asked her point-blank, one day. Sally’s manner immediately grew a trifle reserved.
“Because—because,” she stammered, “it is like—like something—oh! I can’t just tell you right now, Doris. Perhaps I will some day.” And Doris said no more, but put the curious remark away in her mind to wonder over.
“It’s something connected with her secret—that I’m sure!” thought Doris. “I do wish she felt like telling me, but until she does, I’ll try not even to think about it.”
But, all unknown to Doris, the time of her final testing, in Sally’s eyes, was rapidly approaching. Sally herself, however, had known of it and thought over it for a week or more. About the middle of June, there came every year to the “Bluffs” a certain party of young folks, half a dozen or more in number, with their parents, to stay till the middle of July, when they usually left for the mountains. They were boys and girls of about Doris’s age or a trifle older, rollicking, fun-loving, a little boisterous, perhaps, and on the go from morning till night. They spent their mornings at the ocean bathing-beach, their afternoons steaming up and down the river in the fastest motor-boat available, and their evenings dancing in the hotel parlor when they could find any one to play for them. Sally had known them by sight for several years, though never once, in all that time, had they so much as deigned to notice her existence.
“If Doris deserts me for them,” she told herself, “then I’ll be mighty glad I never told her my secret. Oh, I do wonder what she’ll do when they come!”
And then they came. Sally knew of their arrival that evening, when they rioted down to the Landing to procure the fastest launch her father rented. And she waited, inwardly on tenterhooks of anxiety, for the developments of the coming days. But, to her complete surprise, nothing happened. Doris sought her company as usual, and for a day or two never even mentioned the presence of the newcomers. At last Sally could bear it no longer.
“How do you like the Campbells and Hobarts who are at your hotel now?” she inquired one morning.