"Oh, the air is soft. There's no danger of catching cold. Do you notice all the flowers in these little gardens? It's a pleasant air, like the Shoals, and those hawthorn hedges make me think of England,—at least, what I've read of it, for I've never been there. We must ask Martine."
"You are almost as eloquent as Martine herself." Amy turned toward Priscilla with a smile. "You were so quiet at breakfast, and indeed all the morning, until now, that I feared you were not enjoying the trip."
"Well, to be honest, I felt homesick at first. You see, I have never been away before without any of my family, and then I hadn't got the motion of the boat out of my head. But now I feel perfectly well, and perhaps—" but here Priscilla's voice was not quite steady—"perhaps I shall not be homesick."
Amy drew Priscilla's hand within her arm.
"Of course not. Naturally, you will miss your mother and the children. But you'll go back to them with such red cheeks, and so many interesting things to tell, that you will be glad you had courage to come away. You mustn't be homesick."
"Oh, I won't be," said Priscilla,—"that is, if I can help it; but if I didn't know you much better than Martine, I think that I'd have to go home."
Whereupon Amy, perceiving that Priscilla was not yet herself, strove to divert her by telling her little incidents of early Nova Scotian history. Her device was successful, and by the time they had overtaken Mrs. Redmond and Martine, Priscilla was quite cheerful again.
In their walk they had turned aside from the main street, and had reached a point on the outskirts where elevated land gave them a good view of the water. Mrs. Redmond and Martine had found a large flat rock, on which they seated themselves, and Mrs. Redmond was already at work with her sketchbook before her.
"I'm glad that you've come, Amy,—I mean Miss Redmond," began Martine. "I've been trying to tell your mother about some kind of a queer stone that I heard some people talking about at the breakfast-table to-day, but I haven't it quite clear in my mind, and so I'm waiting for you to help me out."
"Oh, the runic stone?" asked Amy. "There isn't so very much to tell about it, except that it was found more than seventy years ago, and is thought by some people to be a memorial of the Norsemen."