SNIGS' queer accident proved more serious than it had at first appeared. The glass had "blown into the flesh," as Rosie had suggested; it took seven stitches of sewing to repair the boy, and he was ill in bed for ten days with high fever and considerable pain.
July was wearing away into August, and the thermometer mounted uncommonly high for an instrument hanging at such altitude above sea-level.
Mrs. Scollard drooped under the heat, and chafed with impatience to get well; the prospect of resuming her duties in town looked distant and dim.
Happie lost her fresh color and buoyancy under unaccustomed duties, and Bob grew grave also as each day piled up hard farm work, and September loomed in sight with its unsolved problems of school and business opportunities.
Polly and Penny were growing bigger and browner almost hour by hour, and Laura was an improved Laura, with her vanity much chastened and her self-confidence subdued by her misadventure. Margery's letters were overflowing with happiness, but her mother read in them subtle indications that her eldest girl was slipping over the boundary line of young girlhood, and was growing up.
Gretta's affairs were getting worse, while she was improving day by day. Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard had grown very fond of the pretty girl, and hardly less interested than Happie in trying to solve the untangling of her life. In proportion as her new friends cared for her, and she blossomed out into the development her cousins had grudged her, the Neumanns became more unkind to her. It was plain that matters could not long continue as they were, and Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard fruitlessly discussed Gretta's prospects, and wished it were within their power to brighten them.
The first of August brought summons of return to Ralph and Snigs. They went away sadly, for the prospect of the Scollards' following them was not bright, and the boys would not be able to come back to the Ark before school began.
These were the changes that August brought to the Ark. With them there was creeping into the air a feeling of waiting. Not of waiting for anything definite, but a vague feeling of unrest, as if "something were going to happen," a feeling very like the atmosphere on a still August afternoon when not a leaf is stirring, and great thunder heads pile up in the west.