"Yes, that's Louise."
It wasn't long before the ladies overtook them. The tension was at once both relieved and heightened. Anna Needham claimed her husband's arm, Louise walked beside Barry, and Miss Whitcom walked alone with her thoughts. However, the groups were not isolated. Yes, there was safety in numbers. Single encounters began to be desperately unpleasant.
What was the matter? In Anna's day, young folks had been given, she remembered, to wandering significantly off by themselves on such rare nights as this. But Louise and Lynndal kept close. Anna was troubled about this—even whispered about it to her husband as they walked along. Alfred started and began to talk about something else. They ought to face this thing. They ought to face it squarely and with courage. But Alfred couldn't. He told himself they must be only imagining things.
They passed the lighthouse, so shadowy and gaunt itself, yet with so beaming an eye! Adjoining the tower was the keeper's residence. There were lights in some of the rooms. A child was calling. A dog was sniffing about. He was quite used to resorters, and did not even bark as the party approached and passed the premises. Louise stooped to pat the dog's head. Barry said: "Hello, sir!" The dog wagged his tail slowly, but did not follow them away from the house. He had learned all life's lessons in puppyhood. He would never stray. What a grand thing, never to stray!
When they were rounding the final curve of the Point separating them from the rendezvous, Mrs. Needham cried: "Oh, look—they're lighting it already!"
The cone-shaped pile was visible, and fire was leaping all about the base. Flame shot up quickly to the very peak, and thence on up, higher and higher, toward the stars.
There was quite a crowd assembled about the fire when the people from Beachcrest arrived. O'Donnell and his delightful escort arrived from another direction at almost the same moment. Then they all sat around in the sand, and kept jumping up to introduce and be introduced. Naturally the Needhams knew everybody on the Point; and it was always quite a thing to have guests. Here were the Goodmans, smiling hosts to the entire assembly. Had they not started the thing long ago when their married life was in its springtime? Ah, the Goodmans! Miss Whitcom remarked afterward that she felt as though she were shaking hands with royalty. "It honestly reminded me," she said, "of my first meeting with Queen Tess!"
In the excitement, of course the roasting sticks had been forgotten, and of course Hilda insisted upon running all the way back with Leslie to Beachcrest after them. By the time the sticks were there, the fire had flared itself into a condition inviting the approach of wienies and marshmallows. A ring of resorters hovered round the fire with sticks held hopefully out and faces shielded by an arm. Naturally there were some mishaps. Some one, by deftly turning and turning, would coax a marshmallow to the point of the most golden perfection, only to have it plump dismally down in the sand at last. Then there would be a chorus of sympathy and disappointment from a group of sitters, each of whom had perhaps more or less hoped to be favoured with the delicious smoking confection. Or else it would be a frankfurter that plumped. But there never was a roast without tragedies.