"Dah Miss Barb."
Barbara sat on a bare ledge of rock above the road-side, platting clovers. Fair stood close below, watching her fingers. She sprang to her feet.
"What did keep you so?" She moved to where Fair had stopped to hand her down, but laughed, turned away, waved good-by to Fannie and Ravenel out in a field full of flowers and western sunlight, and ran around by an easier descent to the carriage. Fair helped her in.
"Homeward bound," she said, and they spun away. As they turned a bend in the pike she glanced back with a carefully careless air, but saw only their own dust.
John, driving beside his mother, with eyes on the infirm wheel, was very silent, and she was very limp. The buggy top was up for privacy. By and by he heard a half-spoken sound at his side, and turning saw her eyes full of tears.
"O thunder!" he thought, but only said, "Why, mother, what's the matter?"
"Ah! my son, that's what I wonder. Why have you shunned me all day? Am I——"
"There are the Tombses waiting at their gate," interrupted the son. The aged pair had hurried away from the train on foot to have their house open for Sister March.
"Yes," said Daphne, sweetly yielding herself to their charge, "John's fierce driving has damaged a wheel, and we wont——"