Mary glanced ahead, saw Jerry assisting Etta as in former times he had assisted her when her feet sank ankle deep in the soft, white sand. Harry gallantly took her arm to aid her. Mary smiled at him wanly. “Thank you,” she said. “I wish I were the self-reliant athletic type like Dora. She never needs help.”
Harry bit his lip to keep from saying aloud what he thought. Before he could think of something else to say, Dick looked back and called to him, “Were you ever any place where there was such a deathlike stillness as there is in this small walled-in spot?”
Harry shook his head. “Never!” he replied. Then, glad of the interruption, he asked, “That’s the rock house, up there, isn’t it?”
Dick nodded. “That’s where the poor old fellow they called ‘Lucky Loon’ buried himself alive, if there’s any truth in the yarn.”
“Believe me, that would take more courage than I’ve got,” Harry declared with a shudder.
Jerry, glancing back, and finding that he and Etta were quite far ahead, turned and waited, still holding his companion’s arm.
Etta’s intelligent face never had seemed more attractive to Mary. The melancholy expression, which the girls had noticed, especially, the day they had called upon her, had vanished. Her eyes were bright with interest.
They walked on in a close group. “I’m simply wild to know what’s in the letter Little Bodil translated,” Dora exclaimed.
Dick laughed. “I suppose we will call that dignified Sister Theresa ‘Little Bodil’ till the end of time,” he said.
When they reached the foot of the leaning rock, which had one time been the stairway to the rock house, they gathered about Jerry who was opening the yellowed envelope. Intense interest and excitement was expressed in each face.