Mary, ever able to blithely cope with any situation, exclaimed sincerely, “Oh, Etta, it’s so gloriously lovely outdoors today, let’s sit here. I’ll take the stump and you two may have the fallen tree.”
Then, as Etta glanced back into the room, half hesitating, Mary asked, “Were you busy about something?”
“Nothing special,” Etta replied. “I wanted to see if we had wakened Baby Bess. She sleeps late and I like to have her.” Again the hazel eyes were sad. The reason was given. “She hasn’t been well since Mother died.” There was a sudden fierce tenderness in her voice as she added, “I can’t lose Baby Bess. She’s so like our mother.”
Then, as though amazed at her own unusual show of feeling before strangers, Etta sank down on the log and shut herself away from them behind a wall of reserve.
But Mary, baffled though she momentarily was, knew that Aunt Mollie was counting on the good their friendship would do Etta, and so, glancing about, she exclaimed, “I love that rushing brook! It seems so happy, sparkling in the sun and singing all the time.”
Dora helped out with, “This surely is a beauty spot here under the trees. It’s the prettiest place I’ve seen since I’ve been in Arizona.”
“I like it,” Etta said, then with unexpected tenseness she added, “I’d love it, oh, how I’d love it, if it were our own and not charity.”
Dora thought, “Now we’re getting at the down-deepness of things. Poor, but so proud! I wonder who in the world these Dooleys are. The name doesn’t suggest nobility.” But aloud she asked no questions. One just didn’t ask Etta about her personal affairs.
Dora groped for something that she could say that would start the conversational ball rolling, but, for once, she had a most unusual dearth of ideas.
Luckily there came a welcome break in the silence which was becoming embarrassing to the kindly intentioned visitors.