Something peered over the rock above them at this moment.  A boy’s head, from which the cap had been removed.

“If only they’ll play now, and not chatter!” thought Dakie Thayne, lying prone along the cliff above, and putting up his elbows to rest his head between his hands.  “This’ll be jolly, if it don’t turn to eavesdropping.  Poor old Noll!  I haven’t had a game since I played with him!”

Sue would not withdraw her attack.  She planted a bishop so that, if the knight should move, it would open a course straight down toward a weak point beside the red king.

“She means to ‘fight it out on that line, if it takes all summer,’” Dakie went on within himself, having grasped, during the long pause before Sue’s move, the whole position.  “They’re no fools at it, to have got it into a shape like that!  I’d just like Noll to see it!”

Martha looked, and drew a thread or two into her stocking, and looked again.  Then she stabbed her cotton-ball with her needle, and put up both hands—­one with the white stocking-foot still drawn over it—­beside her temples.  At last she castled.

Sue was as calm as the morning.  She always grew calm and strong as the game drew near the end.  She had even let her thoughts go off to other things while Martha pondered and she wove in the cross-threads of her darn.

“I wonder, Martha,” she said now, suddenly, before attending to the new aspect of the board, “if I couldn’t do without that muslin skirt I made to wear under my pina, and turn it into a couple of white waists to carry home to mother?  If she goes away, you know”—­

“Aigh!”

It was a short, sharp, unspellable sound that came from above.  Sue started, and a red piece rolled from the board.  Then there was a rustling and a crashing and a leaping, and by a much shorter and more hazardous way than he had climbed, Dakie Thayne came down and stood before them.  “I had to let you know!  I couldn’t listen.  I was in hopes you wouldn’t talk.  Don’t move, please!  I’ll find the man.  I do beg your pardon,—­I had no business,—­but I so like chess,—­when it’s any sort of a game!”

While he spoke, he was looking about the base of the rock, and by good fortune spied and pounced upon the bit of bright-colored ivory, which had rolled and rested itself against a hummock of sod.

“May I see it out?” he begged, approaching, and putting the piece upon the board.  “You must have played a good deal,” looking at Sue.

“We play often at home, my sister and I; and I had some good practice in”—­There she stopped.

“In the hospital,” said Martha, with the sharp little way she took up sometimes.  “Why shouldn’t you tell of it?”

“Has Miss Josselyn been in the hospitals?” asked Dakie Thayne, with a certain quick change in his tone.

“For the best of two years,” Martha answered.

At this moment, seeing how Dakie was breaking the ice for them, up came Miss Craydocke and Leslie Goldthwaite.