“Can’t you smell the blackberry jam cooking on Friendly Terrace day after to-morrow?” demanded Peggy, as she stood beaming over the full pails. “Haven’t we done splendidly?”
All the others were in a mood equally jubilant. Lucy Haines looked from one glowing face to another, and felt a queer tightening in the muscles of her throat. It was not so much their help that touched her. She had been helping other people all her life, in her grave, conscientious fashion. But she had always thought of sympathy as a rather sombre thing, extended when some one died in the family or on like sorrowful occasions. That day she saw it in a different guise, smiling, radiant, something for which one could not say thank you, but which warmed one’s heart through and through, nevertheless. She almost forgot to count up what that berrying-bee would mean to her in dollars and cents, it had meant so much more in other things.
It was a noisy, talkative file of girls who having escorted Lucy to her home, and left the back doorstep covered with berry pails, turned their faces toward Dolittle Cottage. The day spent in the open air had made them hungry. Peggy was invited to divulge her intentions concerning supper and her proposed menu aroused enthusiasm.
“I wonder if Aunt Abigail has missed us?” remarked Ruth, who hated above all things to be left alone for five minutes, so that her thoughts had invested Aunt Abigail’s solitude with a pathos which the independent old lady would have instantly resented.
Amy took it on herself to answer. “No, indeed. That’s the best thing about Aunt Abigail. She likes people and she’s always happy in a crowd, but she’s never lonely when she’s by herself. If there’s something around to read she wouldn’t mind if she didn’t have anybody to speak to for a week.”
Dolittle Cottage was in sight by now. The girls’ eyes scanned the porch for a lounging figure absorbed in a book or magazine. “She isn’t outside, is she?” remarked Peggy. “I hope she isn’t trying to get supper.”
“I hope so, too,” agreed Amy fervently. “I’ve tried Aunt Abigail’s cooking once or twice.” Whether it was due to the hope of arresting Aunt Abigail’s supper preparations, before they had gone too far, or because of some other undefined anxiety, the line advanced on the double-quick.
As they drew nearer the cottage, something peculiar in its appearance gradually became evident. It had a forsaken look, such as it had presented on the day of their arrival. Peggy was the first to discover the explanation of the mysterious change.
“Why, she’s got all the shutters closed!”
Peggy was not mistaken. As a rule, every door and window in the cottage stood wide open, except during heavy storms. Now its tightly shuttered windows and closed doors gave it the look of being unoccupied.