“I certainly do think he ought to be told,” said Dorothy.
These bits of talk much puzzled Rose. As to Dorothy, she lingered a while to chat with Anne, who sat with her hands in her lap in that entire idleness which more than any other thing on earth exasperated Margaret Lyndsay. Below, on the beach, Ned was preparing, a little troubled because the other boys were not to go with him, while they, quite reconciled to the decree of parental fate, were gaily launching their canoe, and singing, as they poled up-stream:
“I would not gi’e my bonny Rose,
My bonny Rose-a-Lyndsaye,
For all the wealth the ocean knows,
Or the wale of the lands of Lyndsaye.”
Then Rose waved her handkerchief, and, much disappointed, again took her field-glass and still saw no canoe. At last Mrs. Lyndsay came out, and they sat in the pleasant sunshine, the mother sewing with even constancy, which as seriously annoyed Anne as her own absence of all manual employ did the little mother.
Very soon Anne became engaged in her usual amusement of recklessly tangling some one in the toils of statements, arguments, and opinions in which she herself had no serious belief; since, I should add, this bright, humorous, and strangely learned creature was, under all, a woman of strong views and deliberately won religious beliefs.
When Rose, distracted from her regrets at the loss of the forenoon fishing, began to hear the talk, Anne had just said:
“I don’t see how the world could go on at all without fibs.”