"Jerry was so disappointed when I told him he needn't come to the station for us," she said. "All your neighbors are excited over your home-coming."
"H'm," sniffed Miss Barry in a one-sided smile. "Luella accommodatin' any boarders?"
"Yes, a mother and daughter from New York."
"H'm. Their bones beginning to show yet?"
Mrs. Porter laughed. "If it is as you say, why shouldn't Miss Luella advertise a reducing establishment? I'm sure it would pay."
The speaker's cheer covered a pang. Linda's slenderness and pallor spoke eloquently, and made her forget the girl's probable injustice to Bertram King.
Linda had made but one visit before to the Cape. That was ten years ago, when her aunt's cottage was first built. It had been a flying trip with her father and mother, and she had slight recollection of the place. Her mother had cared more for mountains than sea, and Linda had visited them on both sides of the ocean. It was now to a practically new place that the motor was carrying her.
She straightened herself with interest when the settlement came in sight, and her large gaze sought for the little house that had been her father's gift of love to his sister.
Mrs. Porter saw her eagerness. "Just about three minutes away now," she said.
"Is that it? The brown one?" asked the girl as they neared the rocky point.