"Oh, Calliope," I murmured miserably, "I've forgotten all about them."
I went out to the veranda with her. At the foot of the steps the others had paused in consultation. Hesitating, they looked up at me, and Mis' Sykes became their spokesman.
"If I was you," she said gently, "I wouldn't feel too cut up over that slip o' yours to Mis' Merriman. She'd ought not to see blunders where they wasn't any meant. It'd ought to be the heart that counts, I say. Good-by. We enjoyed ourselves very, very much!"
They went down the path between blossoming bushes, in the late afternoon sun. And as Calliope followed,—
"That's so about the heart, ain't it?" she said brightly.
XVI
WHAT IS THAT IN THINE HAND?
"Busy, busy, busy, busy all the day. Busy, busy, busy. And busy ..."
"There goes Ellen Ember, crazy again," we said, when we heard that cry of hers, not unmelodious nor loud, echoing along Friendship streets.