Elizabeth looked up from the table where she was working. "If I watch chipmunks all morning, I'll never get these textile figures done.--Mrs. Josslyn said at breakfast that it wasn't a good day for fishing, and that she might wander by."
"She's coming now. I see her in the distance. I like Molly Josslyn."
"So do I.--We haven't been here a week and yet we talk as though we had known these people always!"
"Well, the fact that quite a number knew your brother made for there being no ice to break. And it would be so absurd not to know one another at the New Springs! as absurd as if a shipload of people cast on a desert island--Here she is. Come in, Mrs. Josslyn!"
"Thank you, I don't want a chair," said Molly Josslyn. "You don't mind if I sit on the edge of the porch and dangle my feet, do you? Nor if I take off my hat and roll up my sleeves so that I can feel the air on my arms?"
"Not a bit. Take the hairpins out of your hair and let it fly."
"I wish that I could cut it off!" said Molly viciously. "I will some day! Pretty nearly a whole three-quarters of an hour out of every twenty-four gone in brushing and combing and doing up hair! You have to do it in the morning and the middle of the day and the evening. A twentieth part of your whole waking existence!... Oh, me!"
"I've been in rocking-chair-and-gossip land over on the big porch. I've heard everybody--in a petticoat--who wasn't there hanged, drawn, and quartered. Of course, I knew they were eager to get at me, and so I was obliging and came away."
Marie Caton laughed. "Miss Eden here is an optimist of the first water. If you ask her she'll tell you that women are growing beyond that sort of thing--that they don't sting one another half as much as they used to!"
"No, I don't think they do," said Mrs. Josslyn. "I think that's getting apparent nowadays. Speaking for myself, fresh air and out of doors and swinging off by one's self seem to make a body more or less charitable. But some of us have got the habit yet. Gnat or wasp or hornet or snake, on they go!" she laughed. "Over on the porch it wasn't anything but a little cloud of gnats. They weren't really stinging--just getting between your eyes and the blue sky."
"But it is growing better--it is, it is!" said Elizabeth. "I wouldn't give up that belief for anything."