“I must close my letter if I want to get it in this mail, as I have to walk almost a mile to post it. So, with a bushel of kisses and good wishes, I am as ever your friend
“Nathalie Page.
“P. S. Be sure you tell me all about your work, and if you are anywhere near the front-line trenches. I am wild to know. Again, with love,
“Blue Robin.”
As Nathalie stood by the window putting on her hat in front of the old-fashioned dresser, her eyes suddenly widened. “Why, isn’t that the strangest?” she queried, as she stepped nearer the casement and stared down at the farther end of the lawn, where, from between the fringe of woodland on the side dividing their garden from their neighbor’s, came the glimmer of a little red house, fronting the road.
“Why,” said the girl, almost wonderingly, “that red house glimmers through the trees in the form of a cross.” Then her eyes brightened with the sudden thought, “I do believe it has come that way on purpose, and, yes, I am going to let it be my Red Cross insignia, warning me that I have work to do this summer by not losing my temper, and by being kind to people, even if it is that irritating Cynthia Loretto.
“I wonder who lives in that little red house,” soliloquized the girl. “I must ask Sam. Ah, I remember now. I saw an old lady with silver-gray hair, the other day, poking about in that little flower-garden; she seemed to be weeding. Well, those flowers certainly repay her for her care, for they are a mass of bloom and color.” And then Nathalie, humming a snatch of melody, turned away and hurried down the stairway.
Some time later, on her way to the post-office at the near-by village of Sugar Hill, as she passed the red house she again saw the old lady with the silver hair, in a flopping sunbonnet, digging in the garden. She raised her head as she heard Nathalie’s footsteps, and the girl, with smiling eyes, pleasantly bowed a good-afternoon. But, to her surprise, the old lady stared at her rudely for a moment, and then, without returning her greeting, went on with her weeding.
“What a disagreeable old lady!” was the girl’s sudden thought, the blood rushing to her cheeks in a crimson flood. “Why, I always thought country people were pleasant and chatty with their neighbors. Well,” she murmured ruefully, in an attempt to ignore the slight “perhaps the poor old thing is near-sighted. No, I won’t worry, for, as mumsie says, it is just as well not to be in a hurry to think that people mean to be rude to you.”
So the little incident was forgotten, as she wended her way along the road, cool and dark with the moisture and shade from the woodland that fringed it on each side. On one side the trees screened green hills and sloping meadows, while on the other they guarded Lovers’ Lane, a narrow footpath, skirting the base of Garnet Mountain, that rose upward in scrubby, brownish pasture-land to its summit, crowned with dense masses of green foliage.