“Thank you, but I couldn’t think—” Nina began, but with another disdainful shrug Margie had turned away.
“We’ll have to swallow our pride,” Rose suggested from the doorway. “Let’s be quick, too, before it gets cold.”
“I’m going to dress first,” said Nina. “Because when that scornful Margie goes out, I’m going to follow. I’ll follow her all day long till she goes to the store.”
And she meant that. She dressed herself with all her usual unobtrusive art, and she kept an eye on the house next door. In the very act of lifting her second cup of coffee to her lips, she heard the front door slam. She sprang up, pulled on a delightful little hat, and ran out of her own front door.
Margie was walking quickly up the road, a strong, lithe young figure in a jersey and a short skirt, bareheaded in the sun. And after her went the slender and elegant Mrs. De Haaven, going to market for the first time in her life.
In a happy mood Rose set to work; she washed the dishes, made the bed, set the little place in order, and then began unpacking the two big trunks. Most of the clothes could stay in them, but there were all sorts of other things—silver toilet articles, photographs, books, writing materials, all the dear, friendly things that had often made even hotel rooms look homelike. They worked wonders here. The only trouble was, that there was no shelf for the books, and no flowers.
“I’ll make a shelf!” Rose told herself.
So she went out on the beach and found a suitable small board; then she screwed two coat hooks into the wall beneath the sitting room window, laid the board across them, and stood the favorite books on this in a row.
“Crude, but well-meaning!” she observed, surveying her first piece of carpentering with a smile, and she went out to see if there were any flowers about to delight Nina with when she came home.
The first thing she saw was Bill coming down the road. Her impulse was to step back into the house, but she was ashamed of such weakness; Bill ought to be spoken to and thanked. So she sat down on the steps, and Bill, catching sight of her, swung off his hat with that same fine gesture.