"Let us go down to the beach, then," answered Carolyn, and the two started, being followed by Leander, until that person consented to go back on condition that Prue would return and ride a race with him that very morning.
On the ridge of dry sand above high-water mark Carolyn and her cousin sat down. Neither spoke for some time; Carolyn was resolved not to be the first to break the silence. She would not aid Prudence in whatever she had to say, and she was so weakly human that she could hardly help shrinking a little away from her as she sat beside her. But she did not shrink; she sat with that utter quiet of which she was capable, hardly an eyelash stirring.
As for Prudence, she put one hand down in the warm sand and burrowed into its depths, trying to absorb herself in the action. She had come on an impulse to see Carolyn and to gain an entrance to Savin Hill again. It had been uncomfortable to have to reply that she did not know, when people put inquiries to her about the Ffolliotts. And she was tired of suffering this sort of banishment. She wanted her aunt and cousin to be reconciled to her. People in the end always thus far had been obliged to become reconciled to her. This, to be sure, was rather a difficult matter.
How very irritating Caro's face was! This she felt as she glanced at that face calmly contemplating the movements of a dory which a man was rowing out to his fishing-smack.
"Caro, dear," she at last begun.
Carolyn turned promptly towards her, and waited.
This waiting was, for some reason, inexpressibly exasperating to Prudence, whose face flushed, and who was obliged to wait on her own account before she could speak as she wished to speak. Evidently she was to receive not the slightest help from her companion.
With the rapidity of lightning, Prudence changed her plan as to what she would say. There came a certain line on either side of her mouth, a line which Carolyn had seen before and wondered about.
"Do you want to know the very inmost, secret reason for my coming, Caro?" she asked.
She removed her hand from the sand and carefully dusted her fingers with her handkerchief, smiling to herself as she did so.