Mary watched her tussling and tumbling about with Rush, pondering the riddle but making no great effort to find an answer to it.  Was she child or woman?  To herself what was she?  And what did Rush think about her?  They were evidently well established on some sort of terms.  Rush, no doubt, would tell you—­disgustedly if you sought explanation—­that Sylvia was just a kid.  That he was fond of her as one would be of any nice kid and that her rough young embraces, her challenges and her pursuits, meant precisely what those of an uproarious young—­well, nephew, say,—­would mean.  Only his eagerness to go on playing the game cast a doubt upon that explanation.

They went out abruptly after a while, just as it was getting dark, to settle a bet as to which of them could walk the farthest along the top rail of a certain old fence.  Miss Wollaston saw them go with unconcealed dismay, but it was hard to see how even a conscientious chaperon could have prevented it so long as the child’s elder brother would do nothing to back her up.  To Mary, half-way in her trance, it didn’t seem much to matter what the relation was or what came of it.  It was a fine spring night and they were a pair of beautifully untroubled young animals.  Let them play as they would.

Their departure, did, however, arouse Graham to the assumption of his duties as host and he launched himself into a conversation with Miss Wollaston; a fine example, Mary thought, of what really good breeding means.  Her aunt’s questions about life in the navy were not the sort that were easy to answer pleasantly and at large.  They drew from him things he must have been made to say a hundred times since his return and sometimes they were so wide of the mark that it must have been hard not to stare or laugh.  He must have been wishing, too, with all his might down in the disregarded depths of his heart, that the old lady would yield to the boredom and fatigue that were slowly creeping over her.  Soon!  Before that pair of Indians came back.  But by nothing, not even the faintest irrepressible inflection of voice was that wish made manifest.

It broke over Mary suddenly that this would never happen.  Aunt Lucile might die at her post, but she’d never, in Graham’s presence, retire through a door which was known to lead to her bedroom.  She rose and going around to her aunt’s chair, laid a light hand on her shoulder.  But she spoke to Graham.

“Let’s go out and bring in the wanderers,” she said.  “Aunt Lucile has had a pretty long day and I know she won’t be able to go to sleep until Sylvia is tucked in for the night.”

When the door had closed behind them and they stood where the path, already faintly indicated, led down to the road, he stopped with a jerk and mutely looked at her.

“Do you know where that fence of theirs is?” she asked.

“Yes, I guess so,” he said.  Then—­it was almost a cry—­“Must we go there?  Right away?”