"If you'd like to tell," was the answer.
"I'm dying to tell," she said, turning now fully towards her cousin and fixing her eyes upon her face.
"Then," said Caro, placidly, "if you're dying to tell, I'll try to wait until you speak."
Prudence felt her fingers tingle with a vixenish desire to slap the face before her. Really, was Caro so provoking as this in the old days?
"Well, then, I came to congratulate you, my dear."
"Congratulate me?"
"Certainly. I hear one thing said every time your name is mentioned."
Here Prudence came to a full stop, and tried to be patient until Carolyn should ask a question. But Carolyn resumed her watching of the man in the dory, who had now nearly reached the smack.
Prudence began to plunge her hand once more in the sand. Her face was growing red. What had changed matters between her and the girl beside her? Formerly she had easily maintained the ascendency; now, indefinitely, she felt that she had lost this ascendency.
There was color in Carolyn's face,—her blood she could not control,—but her features were as calm as if she could not think or feel. This one fact made Prudence afraid that when she did speak she might stammer from sheer anger and astonishment. Was this the cousin whom she had considered a sort of namby-pamby, goody-goody girl who would be easily controlled?