“What are you thinking about?” asked Marion discontentedly.
“Of what we shall wear as your bridesmaids. If you don’t let me choose for myself, I will never forgive you.”
“How silly you are! If things go on as they are going now, I shall be too old to have any bridesmaids at all, by the time we are married.”
“Well, I don’t know how things could go much faster, but I believe you would like to be married in a whirlwind. Now, it seems to me it would have been quite dreadful if you had not had these little hitches and impediments. Why should you be different from other people?”
“I hope you will have them yourself, and then you will know they are not so agreeable.”
“But I did not say they were agreeable,” said Winifred, her voice taking a changed tone. “Only that they are such small things in comparison—”
“In comparison with what? I don’t understand,—I don’t think you understand yourself,” Marion exclaimed impatiently.
“O yes, I do,” Winifred said confidently, but without further explanation. Marion was not the person to whom she could have breathed a word of the little visions that trooped up softly as she spoke,—innocent womanly visions, coming and going with a tender grace. She only looked out towards the shining streak of sea and smiled.
Somebody opened the gate at the bottom of the field, waved his hat, and began to clamber lazily towards the two girls,—a big man, with long limbs and high shoulders. Winifred jumped up with a little relief when she saw him, and nodded and beckoned at once as if he needed to be shown where they were.
“How did you find us, Frank?” she called out.