It was all smiling and gay, but it was a crawl, and Elliott knew it and knew that Laura knew it, and she felt ashamed. Wasn’t Stannard’s frank shirking better than her camouflaged variety? But hadn’t she picked berries all the morning in a stuffy sunbonnet under a broiling sun, until she felt as red as a berry and much less fresh and sweet?
“It’s a shame,” said Laura, “that this is just our busy season; but you know you have to make hay while the sun shines. Father thinks we can finish the lower 82 meadows to-day. Then to-morrow we begin cutting on the hill. It’s really fun to ride the hay-rake. I mostly drive the rake, though now and then I pitch for variety.”
She looked so strong and brown and merry, as she talked, that Elliott, comfortably established with “Lorna Doone,” felt almost like flinging her book into the next chair, slipping her arm through Laura’s, and crying, “Lead on!” But she remembered just in time that, as she hadn’t wished to come to the Cameron Farm, it would ill become her to have a good time there. Which may seem like a childish way of looking at the thing, but isn’t really confined to children at all.
So the hay-makers tramped away down the road, their laughter floating cheerfully back over their shoulders; and Elliott sat on the big shady veranda and read her book.
She might have enjoyed it less had she 83 heard Henry’s frank summary at the turn of the lane, when his father inquired the whereabouts of Stannard.
“Beau Brummell hiked over to Upton half an hour ago. I offered him the other Henry, but he doesn’t seem to care to drive anything short of a Pierce-Arrow. Twins, aren’t they?” and Henry nodded in the direction of the veranda.
“Sh-h!” reproved Laura. “They’re our guests.”
“Guests is just it. Yes, they’re guests, all right.”
“Mother says they don’t know how to work,” Priscilla observed.
“That’s another true word, too.”