This elder sister was the one who broke the long silence, though not by uttering words, the sound she produced being an exclamatory gasp and but faintly audible. It appeared to be comprehended as definite information, however, by the younger sister.
“Where, Mildred?” she asked. “I don’t see them yet.”
The other’s apprehension was emphasized upon her troubled forehead, as she nodded in the direction of the far boundary of the links. There, upon the low crest of rising ground capped with the outermost green, appeared six tiny figures, dwindled by the distance and dimmed by the mist that rose into the failing light. For the sun was now so far below the dark horizon that the last ruddiness grew dingy in the sky.
“Yes,” said the younger sister, and her angry frown deepened. “It’s they.”
“Oh, Anne!” the older murmured. “Oh, Anne!”
“Yes, I should say so!” this Anne returned, decisively. “I certainly intend to express myself to my husband, Mildred.”
Mildred shook her head unhappily. “If I only could to mine! But that’s just what I can’t do.”
“I don’t know,” the other said. “I think in your place I should; though it’s true I can’t imagine myself in your place, Mildred. My husband has his faults, and one of ’em’s the way he’s letting himself be used to-day, but I can’t imagine his behaving as your husband is behaving. Not that way!”
She made an impatient gesture toward the west, where the six figures had left the green and were now moving toward the clubhouse, three of them playing deliberately as they came, with three smaller figures, the caddies, in advance. One of the players detached himself, keeping to the southern stretch of the fairway; while the two others, a man and a woman, kept to the northern, walking together, each halting close by when the other paused for a stroke.
“Can you make out which is which, Anne?” the older sister inquired in a voice of faint hope. “Isn’t it John who’s playing off there by himself, and Hobart she keeps so close to her?”