“She does belong to somebody. Her mother gave her to Aunt Affy.”
Perhaps she belonged somewhat to her “Cousin Don.”
Roger never talked about Don. He never read aloud to her the foreign letters she saw so often on the study table.
A sigh came of itself before she could stifle it; the idle fingers opened the magazine; Roger’s pen began to race across the paper. Voices on the piazza brought Marion to her feet; Judith’s voice was in the hall.
“O, Miss Marion, we came to tell you—” began Judith.
“And to ask you how—” continued Jean.
“To make an Outing Ten,” finished Judith.
At the tea-table Marion told Roger the story of how Jean had an outing.
“I wish you might have heard the unconscious way she told it. My life is like Africa: all beaten tracks. I am to be the President of the Outing Ten. All Bensalem is to be my own special private outing, but nobody is to know it.”
“Then, Marion dear, you will have the two most blessed things on the earth.”