Aunt Marjie sighed briefly as Hilda ran by. Boy-crazy. Well, life wasn't made for waiting and working alone. Somehow, this sea air—these lustrous, still nights—were stealing away her resistance. Yes, O'Donnell was a kind of mountain. And yet, curiously enough, he was only a travelling man, too, just as he had always been. Yes, he travelled for Babbit & Babbit. But she would go home to him at last. She would put her head on his shoulder, if he would let her, just like a silly young thing. Suddenly she saw her life as a restless confusion of ambitions and beginnings. Oh, to have spent it so! To have waited as long as this! To have been so afraid of giving herself too easily....
Hilda came running out again. She clutched a new candle in her hand. Her eyes were quite wonderful.
"Where are you going?" asked Mrs. Needham, appearing a little bewildered by this cyclonic going and coming.
"He's out there; we're going to start now!"
There was just sufficient coherence to bring Miss Whitcom to her feet. Always impulsive, she stepped to the screen door and thence down on to the path.
"Hilda!"
"Yes, Aunt Marjie?"
"You're going to light O'Donnell through to the Point?"
"Yes, Aunt Marjie."