"'Bye, Lou," her sister returned, presenting her lips for a kiss. "I hope he'll come all right," she added, while Louise crossed the sanded floor as noiselessly as she could. "And—I'm just dying to see him!"
The other girl nodded back hurriedly from the door, and was off downstairs.
Hilda lay down again. She even closed her eyes. But she did not sleep any more. A horrid little fear clutched at her heart: What if he should not come?
What if Lynndal Barry should turn out to be another Richard, after all?
2
Down in the kitchen Louise adjusted the generator of a small oil stove on which most of the household cooking was done. There was an old wood range in the kitchen also, but that was used only for baking. It generally smoked and occasionally went out—sometimes almost miraculously.
Louise turned up the wicks of the stove burners, made sure that the fuel began soaking freely up into them, and finally applied the flame of a match. Then she put on the teakettle and fetched a frying pan from a hook nearby. Not even young ladies flying grandly off to meet their lovers ought to go without breakfast.
Louise, though she might, perhaps, have been pardoned for overlooking so merely sensible a detail as this, was really treating the whole situation most rationally. It was part of her fine, mature calmness—the calmness she so wished Richard might behold. Playing now—and very convincingly, too—the rôle of cook, she measured coffee, got out eggs, cut some bread. Yes, all this was part of her magnificent calmness. It was indeed a pity Richard couldn't be here to see how altered she was—how unlike the impulsive, unschooled, hyper-romantic girl who had submitted to his fickle attractions. Her cheeks would burn, even now, with inextinguishable chagrin, when she reflected how painfully one-sided the wretched affair had been. Ah, it had constantly been he who did the attracting, she who fluttered about like a silly, puzzled moth. She would have gone without her breakfast every day in the week for Richard. But with Lynndal, thank heaven, all was quite different. Now it was obviously and admittedly she who was doing the attracting. Of course she admired Lynndal tremendously, and loved him. Oh, of course she loved him. She even loved him very much, else would she be engaged? No, but the point was that this time her eyes were open. They were wide open, as eyes should be. She wasn't, this time, blinded by a fatal glitter of wit and the subtle persuasion of manners other and more exquisite than any she had hitherto encountered. Lynndal was totally unlike Richard. Lynndal steadfastly adored her. He even worshipped her. He said so, though with homely and restrained rhetoric, in his letters. Yes, she knew that Lynndal was deeply and lastingly in love with her. So this affair couldn't, it was plain to be seen, turn out the way the other had.
She sang, though very judiciously, under her breath, as she sped about preparing the hurried meal. The water boiled in the kettle. She poured it on the coffee grounds, tossed in an eggshell, left the pot to simmer. Louise was really quite a skilful cook. Even the Rev. Needham had to admit that this much, at any rate, had been gained from the unfortunate Eastern schooling. She set some cups, saucers, and plates on the kitchen table. Then she slipped out the back door of the cottage and along a path to a little rustic pavilion which they called a "tea-house"—though, as a matter of fact, tea never figured in its usefulness. In the "tea-house" Leslie now was waiting. The path leading to it had been blazed through thick forest growth. Dewy shoots and leaf clusters brushed her as she skipped by. The sun was already up, but under the trees, and especially down in the little hollow she had to cross, all was dusky and still night-touched.