Elizabeth stopped motionless in the pathway. One might bear slights and indignities, even positive opposition, but the insinuation that one was vulgar enough to go swimming at all, much more with boys, was an insult no human being could stand. She turned away slowly, and, as the two inexorable figures went on down the willow path into the ravine, she dropped upon the earth and burst into despairing sobs. To be left so cruelly was bad enough, but what hurt most was John's horrible innuendo. It fairly scorched Elizabeth's soul.
She was lying prone upon the clover-starred grass, weeping bitterly, when she was aroused by a rustle in the willows. A face was looking through the green tangle.
"Aw, hurrah, Lizzie," Charles Stuart was saying, "come on. We're only in fun. We ain't goin' swimmin' at all."
"I won't," wailed Elizabeth. "John doesn't want me; he never does, and I'm going right back home."
Through her vanishing tears she had seen John approaching, and had suddenly became conscious of the fact that if she returned home weeping she would be questioned and matters might not be so comfortable for John. That the young man recognized the danger himself was evident, for he added his olive branch to Charles Stuart's. "Hurrah, Lizzie. Don't be such a baby. Come along. We can't wait."
But Elizabeth was a woman to the very tips of her long, tapering fingers, and finding herself in a position of power was not going to capitulate at once. It was delightful to be coaxed, and by the boys, too. So she merely sat up and, gazing back up the lane, sighed in a hopeless way and said, "You don't want me, I know you don't, I might as well go back."
"Come on, you silly," cried John, now thoroughly alarmed. "Come on now. Mind you, we won't wait. Hurrah, Charles Stuart, and she can stay if she likes."
They started down the ravine again; and, seeing that her air of grieved dignity was liable to be lost in the willows, Elizabeth got to her feet and went scrambling after them.
Down at the bottom of the hollow, where the little stream widened into a lazy brown pond, lay Mr. MacAllister's saw-mill. It ran for only a few months in the spring and early summer and was now closed. Only, away down the valley where the road wound into the lumber yard, the banging of boards told that someone was preparing to haul away a load.
None of The Dale children ever passed the mill without a visit, and of course Charles Stuart always explored it all with a fine air of proprietorship. So they scrambled over the silent place with its sweet smell of running water and fresh sawdust. They beat a clamorous tattoo upon the big circular saw, they went down to the lower regions and explored the dark hole where the big water-wheel hung motionless, with only the drip, drip of water from the flume above. They rode on the little car that brought the logs up from the pond, and in as many ways as possible risked life and limb as boys must ever do.