Sitting on the doorstep, Elizabeth Scott leaned her head against the stone wall of the old house. The June twilight was closing in and a hard day’s work was done. Three meals had been prepared and half of the large garden had been hoed and weeded. Feeling that their gardening knowledge was limited, Elizabeth and her brother made up by an excess of cultivation.
A tall, slender boy came round the corner of the house and called “Elizabeth!” There was a dependent quality in his voice; one would have guessed that he was a good deal younger and a good deal less enterprising than the sister whom he addressed.
“Yes, Herbert!” Elizabeth looked up smilingly. Her voice was soft like his, but the words were briskly and firmly spoken. Briskness and firmness were two of Elizabeth’s most noticeable qualities. Those who opposed her called her firmness stubbornness.
There was another quality expressed in her voice—an intense affection for the brother whom she addressed.
“Aren’t you going to bed, Elizabeth?”
“Not yet. Come and sit down.”
Herbert dropped to the doorstep beside his sister. His motions still showed the effect of a long illness from which he had not entirely recovered.
“Are you very tired, Herbert?”
“Not very.”
For a long time both were quiet. The old house seemed gradually to sink into the woodland which rose behind it against the wall of the higher mountains, the shadows of night crept over the miles of fields and orchards which dropped to the distant plain, the garden between the house and the road was blotted out, and the old oak trees on the other side came closer and closer. In the woods whip-poor-wills called, and once an owl flapped low above the doorstep. At that Herbert started and Elizabeth spoke reassuringly.