“Have you forgotten your errand?” she asked, after a moment.

“No, it is at Mr. Howard’s, the house beyond yours.”

“I’m glad you had the errand.”

“So am I. I should have gone home and not known anything about you.”

“And I should have stayed tangled in the black berry vines ever so long,” she laughed.

“You haven’t told me why you were there.”

“Because I was silly,” she said emphatically.

“Do silly people always hide in blackberry vines?” he questioned, laughing.

“Silly people like me,” she said.

At that moment they stopped in front of the gate of Marjorie’s home; through the lilac-bushes—­the old fence was overgrown with lilacs—­Hollis discerned some bright thing glimmering on the piazza.  The bright thing possessed a quick step and a laugh, for it floated towards them and when it appeared at the gate Hollis found that it was only Linnet.

There was nothing of the mouse about Linnet.

“Why, Marjie, mother said you might stay till dark.”

Linnet was seventeen, but she was not too grown up for “mother said” to be often on her lips.

“I didn’t want to,” said Marjorie.  “Good-bye, Hollis.  I’m going to hunt eggs.”

“I’d go with you, it’s rare fun to hunt eggs, only I haven’t seen Linnet—­yet.”

“And you must see Linnet—­yet,” laughed Linnet, “Hollis, what a big boy you’ve grown to be!” she exclaimed regarding him critically; the new suit, the black onyx watch-chain, the blonde moustache, the full height, and last of all the friendly brown eyes with the merry light in them.

“What a big girl you’ve grown to be, Linnet,” he retorted surveying her critically and admiringly.

There was fun and fire and changing lights, sauciness and defiance, with a pretty little air of deference, about Linnet.  She was not unlike his city girl friends; even her dress was more modern and tasteful than Marjorie’s.

“Marjorie is so little and doesn’t care,” she often pleaded with their mother when there was not money enough for both.  And Marjorie looked on and held her peace.

Self-sacrifice was an instinct with Marjorie.

“I am older and must have the first chance,” Linnet said.

So Marjorie held back and let Linnet have the chances.

Linnet was to have the “first chance” at going to school in September.  Marjorie stayed one moment looking at the two as they talked, proud of Linnet and thinking that Hollis must think she, at least, was something like his cousin Helen, and then she hurried away hoping to return with her basket of eggs before Hollis was gone.  Hollis was almost like some one in a story-book to her.  I doubt if she ever saw any one as other people saw them; she always saw so much.  She needed only an initial; it was easy enough to fill out the word.  She hurried across the yard, opened the large barn-yard gate, skipped across the barn-yard, and with a little leap was in the barn floor.  Last night she had forgotten to look in the mow; she would find a double quantity hidden away there to-night.  She wondered if old Queen Bess were still persisting in sitting on nothing in the mow’s far dark corner; tossing away her hindering hat and catching up an old basket, she ran lightly up the ladder to the mow.  She never remembered that she ran up the ladder.