Louise stood there looking down through the screen door. "You certainly got enough!" she exclaimed, a little shrilly—the result of her trying so desperately to be perfectly natural.
"Well," Hilda went on, "you see I kept finding little trees so straight we simply couldn't pass them by. And Leslie just kept cutting. See how sharp they are?"
Leslie, as though availing himself of the invitation (regardless of its not having been exactly addressed to him) placed a finger on one of the smoothly whittled points and withdrew it with a small, oddly juvenile howl of mock distress. The wounded finger went into his mouth. Leslie was certainly not at his ease.
Suddenly Hilda ran up close to her sister and asked, in a very low voice: "Have you been crying?"
Louise's heart jumped. "Why, no," she replied.
"It must be the sun in your eyes," said Hilda.
"Yes, it must be." And she turned away from them and sat in the same chair her mother had occupied when she had demanded of Alfred if he thought she might be growing old. Louise rocked slowly, just as her mother had rocked. Yet her thoughts rushed madly to and fro. There was a battle of ghosts in her heart.
Aunt Marjie came out breezily, accompanied by Mr. O'Donnell, who was about to take his departure. The parent Needhams stood side by side in the cottage doorway, hospitably bowing, but seeming to realize, with a kind of fineness, that they should come no further, and that the very last rites must be performed by the lady for whose sake he had been asked.
Mr. O'Donnell extended a hand of farewell to Louise, who rose.
"Oh, are you going?" she asked.