“Always plenty of room on the mourners’ bench,” said Katherine, moving over.
“All right, we’ll come,” said Gladys. “How do you get down? Oh, I see, there’s a sort of path going down behind mother’s tent. Look out, we’re coming.”
Sahwah and Gladys crawled backward down the bluff, hanging on to the grass and roots, and dropped to the ledge beside Katherine. They settled themselves comfortably and swung their feet over the edge.
“Now, tell us your trouble,” said Gladys, mopping Katherine’s head with her last clean handkerchief and getting it as wet as those up on the tent ropes.
Katherine hunched her shoulders and drooped her head until it almost touched her chest. “I can’t bear to think of going home!” she said heavily.
“Going home!” echoed Sahwah and Gladys, nearly falling off the ledge in alarm. “You’re not going home, are you? Don’t tell us that you—” Words failed them and they stared in blank dismay.
It was Katherine’s turn to look alarmed when 150 she caught their meaning. “Oh, I don’t mean that I’m going home now,” she said hastily. “I mean that I can’t bear to think of going home at the end of the summer.”
“Gracious!” said Gladys weakly. “Who’s thinking about the end of the summer already? Why, it’s hardly begun. You don’t mean to say that you’re worrying now about going home in September?”
Katherine nodded, without cheering up one bit. “That’s the trouble,” she said laconically. “I know it’s a crazy thing to worry about, but when we were having such a good time on the lake this morning I got to thinking how I hated to leave it, even to go to college, and started to get blue right away. And the more I thought about it the bluer I got, and the bluer I got the more I thought about it, and–that’s all there is to it!” she finished with a characteristic gesture of her long arms. “And now I can’t stop thinking about it and I’ve just got the indigoes!”
“Well, of all things!” exclaimed Sahwah. “Aren’t some people the funniest things, though?”