“That proves something,” she told herself, “but just how much I can’t tell. But I’ll leave that to study out to-night. Must hurry on or I’ll be late to my lecture.”
“That sled track went toward the dry dock,” she told herself a few moments later. “To-night when I go home I’ll try to trace it out and see where it went.”
Lucile was home early that day. Marian had not gone to school at all. She had stayed on the beach making sketches of the ice-jam on the lake front.
“I’ll be going out again to-night,” she told Lucile. “Wind’s shifted. It’s offshore now and rising. There are certain effects of lights and shadows which you get on the rim of a body of fresh water which you don’t in the sea ice. Sea ice is white, dull white, like snow. Fresh water ice is blue; blue as the sky sometimes. I want to catch it before it blows out again. But what brings you home so early, Lucile?”
“Cut my lecture. Headache,” she explained, pressing her temples. “Nothing much though. And, Marian,” she exclaimed suddenly, “what do you think? That story!”
“Did he take it?”
“The editor of the Literary Monthly? No, better than that.”
“Could anything be better than that?”
“Lots of things.”
“What is better?”