"You're not going to lie on the ground, there?" she asked, with the importance and authority of a woman who puts herself in charge of a sick man, as a woman always must when there is such a man near her.
"I would be willing to be under it, such a day as this," he said. "But I'll take the shawl, if that's what you mean. I thought it was here?"
"I'll get it for you," said Louise; and he let her go into the parlor and bring it out to him. She laid, it in a narrow fold over his shoulder; he thanked her carelessly, and she watched him sweep languidly across the buttercupped and dandelioned grass of the meadow-land about the house, to the dark shelter of the pine grove at the north. The sun struck full upon the long levels of the boughs, and kindled their needles to a glistening mass; underneath, the ground was red, and through the warm-looking twilight of the sparse wood the gray canvas of a tent showed; Matt often slept there in the summer, and so the place was called the camp. There was a hammock between two of the trees, just beyond the low stone wall, and Louise saw Maxwell get into it.
Matt came out on the piazza in his blue woollen shirt and overalls and high boots, and his cork helmet topping all.
"You look like a cultivated cowboy that had gobbled an English tourist, Matt," said his sister. "Have you got anything for me?"
Matt had some letters in his hands which the man had just brought up from the post-office. "No; but there are two for Maxwell—"
"I will carry them to him, if you're busy. He's just gone over to the camp."
"Well, do," said Matt. He gave them to her, and he asked, "How do you think he is, this morning?"
"He must be pretty well; he's been writing ever since breakfast."
"I wish he hadn't," said Matt. "He ought really to be got away somewhere out of the reach of newspapers. I'll see. Louise, how do you think a girl like Sue Northwick would feel about an outright offer of help at such a time as this?"