This was to Kathryn a thrilling adventure. The silence and beauty were as novel as any experience she had ever known, and her pulses quickened. The solitude of the woods was not restful to her, but it stimulated every sense. The leaves were dropping from the trees; the sunlight slanted through the lacy boughs in exquisite design, and the sky was as blue as midsummer. There was a smell of wood smoke in the crisp air; the feel of the sweet leaves, underfoot, was delightful. Kathryn “scruffed” along, unmindful of her high heels and thin silk stockings. She did not know that she could be so excited.
She crossed the road and turned to the hill. An impish impulse swayed her. If she came upon Northrup! Well, how romantic and thrilling it would be! She fancied his surprise; his–––Here she paused. Would it be joy or consternation that would betray Northrup?
Now, as it happened, Mary-Clare had given her morning up to the business of the Point and she was worn and super-sensitive. An underlying sense of hurry was upon her. When she had done all that she could do, she meant to go to her Place and lay her tired soul open to the influence that flooded the quiet sanctuary. All day this had sustained her. 187 She would leave Noreen at the inn; send Jan-an back there, and would, after her hour in the cabin, seek Larry out and give him what he asked––the Point.
Through the hours at the inn she had feared Northrup’s appearance, but when she learned that he had been away all night, she feared for him. Her uneventful days seemed gone forever, and yet Mary-Clare knew that soon––oh, very soon––there would be to-morrows, just plain to-morrows running one into another.
She was distressed, too, that Larry was to have the Point. Aunt Polly had shaken her head over it and remarked that it seemed like dropping the Pointers into Maclin’s mouth. But Peter reassured her.
“I see your side, child,” he comforted. “What the old doc said goes with you.”
“But it was Larry, not the doctor, as specified the Point,” Polly insisted.
“All right, all right,” Peter patted Polly’s shoulder. “Have it your own way, but I see it at this angle. Give Larry what he wants; Maclin has Larry, anyway, but if he keeps him here where we can watch what’s going on, I’ll feel easier. He’ll show his hand on the Point, take my word for it. Larry gallivanting is one thing, Larry with Twombley and Peneluna, not to mention us all, is another. You let go, Mary-Clare, and see what happens.”
“Well, I hold”––Aunt Polly was curiously stubborn––“that Larry Rivers don’t want that Point any more than a toad wants a pocket.”
“All right, all right!” Peter grew red and his hair sprang up. “Put it as you choose. This may bring things to a head. I swear the whole world is like a throbbing and thundering boil––it’s got to bust, the world and King’s Forest. I say, then, let ’em bust and have done with it.”