“I wish,” said Ruth, “that we could have Lucilla Waters here.”

“My gracious!” cried Rosamond, startled into a soft explosion.  “What for?”

“Why, I think she’d like it,” answered Ruth.

“Well, I suppose Arctura Fish might ‘like it’ too,” responded Rose, in a deadly quiet way now, that was the extreme of sarcasm.

Ruth looked puzzled; as if she really considered what Rosamond suggested, not having thought of it before, and not quite knowing how to dispose of the thought since she had got it.

Dakie Thayne was there; he sat holding some gold-colored wool for Mrs. Holabird to wind; she was giving herself the luxury of some pretty knitting,—­making a bright little sofa affghan.  Ruth had forgotten him at the instant, speaking out of a quiet pause and her own intent thought.

She made up her mind presently,—­partly at least,—­and spoke again.  “I don’t believe,” she said, “that it would be the next thing for Arctura Fish.”

Dakie Thayne’s eyebrows went up, just that half perceptible line or two.  “Do you think people ought always to have the next thing?” he asked.

“It seems to me it must be somebody’s fault if they don’t,” replied Ruth.

“It is a long waiting sometimes to get the next thing,” said Dakie Thayne.  “Army men find that out.  They grow gray getting it.”

“That’s where only one can have it at a time,” said Ruth.  “These things are different.”

“‘Next things’ interfere occasionally,” said Barbara.  “Next things up, and next things down.”

“I don’t know,” said Rose, serenely unconscious and impersonal.  “I suppose people wouldn’t naturally—­it can’t be meant they should—­walk right away from their own opportunities.”

Ruth laughed,—­not aloud, only a little single breath, over her work.

Dakie Thayne leaned back.

“What,—­if you please,—­Miss Ruth?”

“I was thinking of the opportunities down,” Ruth answered.

It was several days after this that the young party drifted together again, on the Westover lawn.  A plan was discussed.  Mrs. Van Alstyne had walked over with Olivia and Adelaide Marchbanks, and it was she who suggested it.

“Why don’t you have regular practisings,” said she, “and then a meeting, for this and the archery you wanted to get up, and games for a prize?  They would do nicely together.”

Olivia Marchbanks drew up a little.  She had not meant to launch the project here.  Everything need not begin at Westover all at once.

But Dakie Thayne broke in.

“Did you think of that?” said he.  “It’s a capital idea.”

“Ideas are rather apt to be that,” said Adelaide Marchbanks.  “It is the carrying out, you see.”

“Isn’t it pretty nearly carried out already?  It is only to organize what we are doing as it is.”

“But the minute you do organize!  You don’t know how difficult it is in a place like this.  A dozen of us are not enough, and as soon as you go beyond, there gets to be too much of it.  One doesn’t know where to stop.”