"Finish a letter," echoed Mary, "with that hurdy-gurdy going! I admire your concentration. Betty, truly I can't stand it another minute. I'm going back."
"All right. Good-bye, Eleanor. Hurry up and come," called Betty, flying after Mary down the path.
Eleanor Watson looked after them for a moment and then with a little despairing sigh sat down again at her desk. She was writing to Jim. It was almost a month since she had sent off her last letter to him and yet there seemed to be nothing to say. She added a line or two, dropped her pen and went back to the window. The girls were dancing to the music of the hurdy-gurdy. Alice Waite was standing on the edge of the crowd, hugging a huge rag-doll in her arms as if it was her dearest treasure. Eleanor shrugged her shoulders impatiently. The whole affair was perfectly absurd. She had told Alice Waite so at luncheon, in her haughtiest manner. She picked up a book from the table and began to read, but in spite of her determination to ignore it, her thoughts would wander to the pretty picture outside her window. The shouts and laughter, the gay babel of talk with the undertone of droning music rang in her ears. She slammed down her window, but still she could hear them.
What a good time they were having! Yes, they were absurd, with the absurdity that belongs to youth—happy, light-hearted, inconsequent youth. Eleanor Watson felt that she had left that sort of thing far behind her. Before the summer when Judge Watson had brought home a gay young wife to take his daughter's place at the head of his household, before the night on the river when she had seen herself as Harding college saw her, before the Indian summer afternoon when she had fought and lost her battle on the stairway of the main building,—before those crises she could have been a happy little girl with the rest of them, but not now. Her heart was full of bitter, passionate envy. How easy life was for them, while for her it seemed to grow harder and more impossible every day. In the week that had passed since the sugaring-off she had seen Dora once, and she had been more hurt by the restraint and embarrassment that the child could not hide than by all that had gone before. How was she to win back Dora's confidence and change Betty's pity to respect?
She could not stand that music another minute. She would go for a long walk—far enough at least to escape from hurdy-gurdies and chattering girls. She got her hat, pulled on a light silk coat, for in spite of the unseasonable heat the late afternoon would be cool, and hurried down- stairs. Hastening through the lower hall she almost ran into Miss Ferris, the last person she wanted to meet.
"My dear," Miss Ferris cut short her apology, "we evidently have too much to think about, both of us." She looked at Eleanor keenly. "Why aren't you out being a little girl with the rest of them?" she asked.
"I didn't feel like it, Miss Ferris," said Eleanor, turning away from the searching gray eyes, "I was going for a walk instead."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Then"—Miss Ferris hesitated—"may I come too, or don't you want me?"