"You rascal! You'll die of some sort of degeneracy of the heart long before I'm eighty-five!"
For hours the tide set in through the east entrance and swirled and ebbed and flowed. When at last the gates closed upon the throng the De Jarnette party sought the Ellipse, where the children had been promised a lunch.
Harcourt and Bess had fallen behind the others. As they reached the seats beneath the trees he said wheedlingly to Mrs. Pennybacker, "I don't think your little girl has had a very good time to-day. She hasn't had any eggs, or balloon, or anything. Suppose you let me give her a row up the river just to keep her from feeling neglected." Then looking at the basket, "We'll take the portion that falls to us and eat it on the way."
When the two were gone and the children had had their lunch and gone off to play, the two ladies sat and watched them.
"How nicely they play together," remarked Margaret.
"Yes," said Mrs. Pennybacker absently. "Margaret, I am quite disturbed about Rosalie. I don't know what to make of her lately."
"What is the trouble? Has she had any more of those fainting spells?"
"Never since the first one. The nurse thought she was likely to have them at any time, but she has never had another. Queer what caused that."
"Weakness, I suppose. And yet she grows weaker every day."
"Yes, Margaret, somehow she has never seemed the same to me since that day. You know how happy she was when she first came. We were speaking that very morning, I remember, about the look of peace that had come into her face."