Yet, a few hours later, she stood on the veranda, serene, poised, mistress of her own delicate charm, and smiled at her sister, who was marshalling her guests into a line of traps that stood in the driveway. "I'm old-fashioned enough to like an all-day picnic," Mrs. McTavish declared, as she tied a veil stoutly over her hair. "The only concession I make is not to pack everybody into one barge. No, it's not a boat, Mrs. Bourne, as you Westerners always think, but a sort of tame omnibus in colors, named for a lady or a virtue, in which you sit sideways and are irresistibly moved to song. Nanna dear, you and Harry shall have the new runabout. Two of you men will have to go with the baskets—there are so many of you. Judge Howard and John shall take turns driving Daisy and me. No, thank you. I'll start on my own legs, and you shall pick me up at the foot of the hill."
Bradford's beach lies white and narrow between two high grass-grown bluffs that break sharply to the sea. On its hard sands they had made a fire, spread their cloth, and eaten luncheon, and now, with the afternoon sun hanging red and bold against the western hills, they sat under the shelter of the cliffs, two here, three there, with laughing groups beyond.
Joanna's parasol held her own face in shadow and brought into relief the grizzled head of old Mr. Bourne, who had fallen to her conversational lot, and who, having exhausted uneasily all other topics, had seized on the theme of his daughter's perfections. In spite of a certain sympathy that the candor of his fatherly enthusiasm stirred, she winced at the turn the talk had taken. Her perception fell short of the humor of the situation; it stopped at the coincidence of their thoughts. To change the subject she would have scorned had she the inclination, and she was conscious only of a wish to exhaust it. So she held a smile on her lips while her ears struggled to deny the touch of a girl's silvery laugh just beyond, brought into relief against the deeper tones of Harry's voice.
"And the way she has behaved about her engagement is wonderful." Joanna started. Mr. Bourne met the question in her eyes.
"You didn't know she was engaged, Miss Severn? Well, I don't wonder. You see, we don't speak of it, her mother and I, unless she does first, and she's not the girl to talk to everybody. Why, it's to young Miller, my partner's boy, in Detroit. They were to be married last fall." His voice clouded to a whisper. "But a couple of months before the day, his doctor—he'd had a bit of a cough, and he's a slender chap—found out that things were pretty bad with him, and that he'd have to go away if he wanted to live—he had just a fighting chance. Daisy never hesitated a minute when we told her. 'Then we'll be married to-morrow,' said she, 'and go to Colorado together.'
"The doctor said that wouldn't do, and her mother and I bore him out; but she just smiled and insisted, and 'twasn't till Miller himself wouldn't hear to it—and it broke him up some, I can tell you—that she gave way. Then we brought her East, and she does everything we want her to, but she never says much. She's just waiting, and she won't have long to wait, either. Miller's doing very well; they say he'll be all right again in a year, and then they'll be married. And that, Miss Severn, is the sort of a girl my Daisy is!"
His kind old eyes beamed at her from under their gray brows as he held back his head and waited for an answer. Joanna realized the inadequacy of her attention, and was struggling for a word just as Edith Louden came by with one of the Bryces. She seized her opportunity and stood up.
"I thank you for telling me this, Mr. Bourne"—she held out her hand,—"and now I'm going out to the lighthouse. No, you are not to follow," as he rose ponderously. "I want to see the keeper's old mother. She is very shy, but I talked with her last fall when I was here, and I promised to come again. No; not even you, Harry." She smiled and shook her head at the young man who had reached her side. "I really want to go alone."
The relief was genuine, even with the shame that followed close at its heels for the unworthiness of her suspicions, yet it somehow failed of completeness. Her austere sense of justice winced at the
