Mrs. Wilson was not one to postpone a disagreeable duty. She put on her bonnet and gloves and started at once to Larkland. It was a path familiar to her childish feet. How often she, like her own child, had roamed about this dear, quiet country—playing in the mill, roaming about Larkland, fishing in Tinkling Water. Miranda and Giles Spotswood, Anne Mayo, Polly Spencer, Beverley Wilson, and Red and Black Mayo Osborne had been her comrades; Black Mayo, the leader in all their sports, was the chum of Beverley Wilson whom she married the very June that Black Mayo married Polly Spencer. The friendship of early days had lasted and deepened with the years. It was stronger than the tactful habit of never asking personal questions.
She found Polly Osborne on the porch, busy, as usual, with Red Cross sewing. She dropped her work and set a comfortable chair in a pleasant corner of the porch while she called greetings to the approaching visitor. “How good of you to brave the heat and come to see me!� she said. “Here is a fan. Take off your bonnet. I’ll get you a glass of raspberry vinegar. It is so refreshing on a warm day!�
Mrs. Wilson put a protesting hand on her arm. “Don’t, Polly. I can’t sit down, not now. Where is Mayo? I want to see him—about something important.�
“Mayo? I reckon he’s in the garden. He has some pigeons there in the old summerhouse. I’ll find him and tell him you want to see him.�
“No, please, Polly. Let me go there and speak to him. Then I will come back and see you.�
“Certainly; just as you wish,� said Mrs. Osborne. “You know the way—all the ways here—as well as I do.�
Mrs. Wilson went along the flagstones across the yard, through the garden gate, down the boxwood-bordered walk. She turned across the huge old garden to the summerhouse embowered in microfila and Cherokee roses, with their dark foliage starred with creamy blossoms. She heard a merry voice whistling “Dixie,� the only tune that Black Mayo had ever mastered. There he was in overalls, hard at work, putting up boxes for nests.
“How do you do, Mayo?� she said, speaking before he saw her.
He dropped his hammer and caught both of her hands in his.
“I wished you on me,� he said gleefully. “I was thinking so hard about the rainy days when we children used to play here! I found a box with some of our dominoes in that closet when I was clearing it out to make a place to keep feed for my pigeons. Don’t you remember——�