He did not respond, but gazed at her with a preoccupied air.
“One, two!” Still he made no answer. Her expectant attitude changed and her arms fell to her sides, while a look of disappointment spread over her face. “I think it’s just horrid if you’re going to be poky and grown-up! I don’t see why people can’t work and play too; but it seems they never do. Just because you’re three years older than me, you think you’re grown up!”
“Why, Beth, what’s come over you?”
“You’re a man all at once; that’s all. I s’pose now we can’t have any more fun with stilts and tar-barrels. Nor fly kites, nor run races, nor—nor do anything we used to do! I hate the scheme,—I do!”
Ben laughed. “Come on,” he said; “I’ll race you.”
Off they went, flying along the beach until they came up, breathless, against the wooded slopes of Black Point. They climbed up the bank until they reached the ramparts.
“That was fine!” Beth said, seating herself on the grassy slope. “Now, you can tell me some more about your plan. I don’t hate it any more.”
Spread before them was the bay, dotted with craft. Across the channel the Marin County hills rose abruptly from the water’s edge. At Fort Point, which jutted out beyond the promontory on which they were sitting, some experiments in a new explosive were being made. They watched the flash and report and the little cloud of dust the charge made when it struck the opposite shore. Above them, on a higher embankment, a sentry paced to and fro, his bayonet glistening in the sunlight.
“So, Dame Trot scolds a good deal, does she?” Ben remarked, ignoring the invitation to expatiate on the scheme. “I must stop calling her that. Her name’s Mrs. Hodges.”
“Yes, she does. I don’t think she means to, though,” she added. “I think she’s been disappointed in so many things that it’s made her cross with everything. If it wasn’t for poor little Sue I couldn’t stand it.”