CHAPTER XI.

IN THE PINES.

It was a glorious July morning, and there was nothing particular on foot.  In the afternoon, there would be drives and walks, perhaps; for some hours, now, there would be intensifying heat.  The sun had burned away every cloud that had hung rosy about his rising, and the great gray flanks of Washington glared in a pale scorch close up under the sky, whose blue fainted in the flooding presence of the full white light of such unblunted day.  Here and there, adown his sides, something flashed out in a clear, intense dazzle, like an enormous crystal cropping from the granite, and blazing with reflected splendor.  These were the leaps of water from out dark rifts into the sun.

“Everybody will be in the pines to-day,” said Martha Josselyn.  “I think it is better when they all go off and leave us.”

“We can go up under our rock,” said Sue, putting stockings and mending cotton into a large, light basket.  “Have you got the chess-board?  What should we do without our mending-day?”

These two girls had bought new stockings for all the little feet at home, that the weekly darning might be less for the mother while they were away; and had come with their own patiently cared for old hose, “which they should have nothing else to do but to embroider.”

They had made a sort of holiday, in their fashion, of mending-day at home, till it had come to seem like a positive treat and rest; and the habit was so strong upon them that they hailed it even here.  They always got out their little chess-board, when they sat down to the big basket together.  They could darn, and consider, and move, and darn again; and so could keep it up all day long, as else even they would have found it nearly intolerable to do.  So, though they seemed slower at it, they really in the end saved time.  Thursday night saw the tedious work all done, and the basket piled with neatly folded pairs, like a heap of fine white rolls.  This was a great thing, and “enough for one day,” as Mrs. Josselyn said.  It was disastrous if they once began to lie over.  If they could be disposed of between sun and sun, the girls were welcome to any play they could get out of it.

“There they go, those two together.  Always to the pines, and always with a work-basket,” said Leslie Goldthwaite, sitting on the piazza step at the Green Cottage, by Mrs. Linceford’s feet, the latter lady occupying a Shaker rocking-chair behind.  “What nice girls they seem to be,—­and nobody appears to know them much, beyond a ’good-morning’!”

“Henny-penny, Goosie-poosie, Turkey-lurky, Ducky-daddles, and Chicken Little!” said Mrs. Linceford, counting up from thumb to little finger.  “Dakie Thayne and Miss Craydocke, Marmaduke Wharne and these two,—­they just make it out,” she continued, counting back again.  “Whatever you do, Les, don’t make up to Fox Lox at last, for all our sakes!”