When the five days were up, he felt positive regret at having to go, and his good-bye to all the Ashendynes was cordial. He had already written to Mrs. LeGrand, and, of course, to his mother. He went; the stage took him up the mountain....
"For all I could see—and I watched pretty closely—there didn't anything come of it," remarked Marie Caton. "On the whole, I am rather glad. Now you can't hear the rumble of the stage any longer. He's gone out of the picture.—Betsy, stop writing and look at the robin and the chipmunk—"
They had the tiniest cottage to themselves—Elizabeth's brother being an old-timer here, and his letter to the proprietor procuring them great consideration. There were but two rooms in the cottage. Roof and porch, it was sunk in traveller's-joy, and in front sprang a vast walnut tree, and beyond the walnut a span-wide stream purled between mint over a slaty bed. From the porch you looked southward over mountains and mountains, and every evening Antares looked redly back at you. Now it was morning, and wrens and robins and cat-birds all were singing.
Elizabeth looked up from the table where she was working. "If I watch chipmunks all morning, I'll never get these textile figures done.—Mrs. Josslyn said at breakfast that it wasn't a good day for fishing, and that she might wander by."
"She's coming now. I see her in the distance. I like Molly Josslyn."
"So do I.—We haven't been here a week and yet we talk as though we had known these people always!"
"Well, the fact that quite a number knew your brother made for there being no ice to break. And it would be so absurd not to know one another at the New Springs! as absurd as if a shipload of people cast on a desert island—Here she is. Come in, Mrs. Josslyn!"
"Thank you, I don't want a chair," said Molly Josslyn. "You don't mind if I sit on the edge of the porch and dangle my feet, do you? Nor if I take off my hat and roll up my sleeves so that I can feel the air on my arms?"
"Not a bit. Take the hairpins out of your hair and let it fly."
"I wish that I could cut it off!" said Molly viciously. "I will some day! Pretty nearly a whole three-quarters of an hour out of every twenty-four gone in brushing and combing and doing up hair! You have to do it in the morning and the middle of the day and the evening. A twentieth part of your whole waking existence!... Oh, me!"