"Dear Yonny," he murmured, in the unresponsive ear, as he fastened him in the shade, and gave him a pat and a lump of sugar from his pocket.
"May we go in?" asked Hilda. "I want to see the state of your storeroom," she added, with an air of protecting care that sat prettily on her youthful face.
"_Natürlich_," called Friedrich from Johnny's side. "The key of the cupboard is in the table-drawer."
Sydney was alone on the porch when Friedrich came up the steps.
"Your view is lovely," she said. "I think I like Pisgah better from this angle than from any other."
"Then do I, too," he replied, looking at her with his heart in his eyes, for it was long since he had seen her, and to a lover yesterday, when it is passed, is as a thousand years.
Sydney threw up her chin haughtily, and von Rittenheim thought ruefully of the category in which undoubtedly she classed all his remarks of that kind.
"Will you not enter?" he said. "Never have you honored my roof, I think." And Sydney was glad to do so to avoid being alone with him.
They found Hilda leaning against the table opposite the cupboard, while Bob recited the contents of the shelves, and Wendell wrote them down.
"What in the world are you doing?" cried Sydney, in amazement.
Friedrich looked annoyed. No one likes to have his house-keeping arrangements too closely scrutinized.
"Friedrich, this list is going to help you ver-ry much to know what you must or-rder from the--how you call him?" She appealed to John and Bob in turn. "The grocy?"
Friedrich smiled to conceal his irritation.
"My way, Hilda, is to get more of something when I find empty the box that holds it. I'm afr-raid I am not pr-rovident."
"That I must teach you," she said, and Sydney and John turned away.
Sydney walked to the mantel-shelf, which was so high that it was on a level with her eyes. There was an array of pipes and a tin box of tobacco; a volume of Schiller, with some matches lying loose upon it; and, flat on the board, a photograph. She picked it up idly, not noticing what she was doing, conscious only of doing something, so that her separation from the others might not be noticeable. Her discovery proved to be half of a picture of a Neighborhood picnic, taken by an itinerant photographer who had established his tent near the Flora post-office. It was that side of the group in which she was standing, and her figure was brought into relief by a frame of card-board slipped over it like a mat. It had become a picture of herself, and of herself alone.