Sue was looking down the street eagerly. Mary looked too, and saw a carriage coming toward them with two people in it.
"No one we know, I think," said Mary.
"They are strangers!" cried Sue, in great excitement,—"a man and a girl. Mary Hart, I do believe it is Mr. Packard and Clarice! It must be. They are strangers, I tell you! I never saw either of them in my life. And look at her hat! Mary, will you look at her hat?"
"I am looking at it!" said Mary. "Yes, Sue; I shouldn't wonder if you were right. Where are you going?"
"Indoors, so that I can stare. You wouldn't be so rude, Mary, as to stare at her where she can see you? You aren't going to stare at all! Oh, Mary, what's the use of not being human? You are too poky for anything. A stranger,—and that girl, of all the world,—and not have a good look at her? Mary, I do find you trying sometimes. Well, I am going. Good-by."
And Sue flew into the house, and flattened herself behind the window-curtain, where she could see without being seen. Mary was provoked for a moment, but her vexation passed with the cracking of a dozen pods. It was impossible to be long vexed with Sue.
As the gay carriage passed, she looked up quietly for a moment, to meet the unwinking stare of a pair of pale blue eyes, which seemed to be studying her as a new species in creation. A slender girl, with very light hair and eyebrows, a pale skin, and a thin, set mouth—not pretty, Mary thought, but with an "air," as Sue would say, and very showily dressed. The blouse of bright changeable silk, with numberless lace ruffles, the vast hat, like a flower-garden and bird-shop in one, the gold chain and lace parasol, shone strangely in the peaceful village street.
Mary returned the stare with a quiet look, then looked down at her peas again.
"What, oh, what shall we do,"
she said to herself, quoting a rhyme her father had once made,—