“We’ll meet you at the Lake,” they said to Ethel, and off they went.

It was a warm afternoon.  The sky looked alternately bright, then cloudy, but they started not minding though it rained.

Nora declined to join the buckboard party and strolled off by herself.  She looked almost pretty in her clean, white linen suit and her hair tightly bound by a broad black ribbon.  The goldenrod and sumac were opening, but the summer flowers looked old and tired, as though they needed new gowns and freshening up a bit.  The girl thought of how alone she was and sighed.  Then her mother came into her mind.  To think that she had to be taken while so young—­not yet forty-five, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.  But “Thank God,” she thought, “I never caused her any unhappiness, and I still have my dear, kind father,” and Nora wiped her eyes.  “It’s Miss Ethel who dislikes me.  No matter what I say to her nor how friendly I am, she won’t like me.  And when I try to joke or do her a little kindness, if she smiles sure her smile chills me.  It’s like a piece of ice going down me back.  And her ‘thank you, Honora’ is as cold as charity.  I like her mother the best.  And yet Miss Ethel kissed me goodbye at the train last summer; but she was kissing everyone and I suppose she had to kiss me, for she’s too much of a lady to slight a body.  Yet she’d be glad to see the last of me—­that I know.”

CHAPTER IX

NORA GIVES SERVICE

Honora was an unconscious lover of Nature.  She turned and beheld the sun slowly sinking.

“Ah! it must be nearly six o’clock,” she thought.  “I must make haste,” but she stood spellbound, watching the glowing crimson, purple and yellow changing into orange, green, and greyish pink, and she gazed at the fiery ball sinking slowly behind the hills.

“How lovely!” she thought, “and it’s gone down in a cloud.  That means rain.  It’s growing very dark.  Me for a quick walk down these hills before I lose my way.”

She started down the path not a little worried.  She had strayed off the main road and was on a side one leading through the woods.  If only it would keep light until she reached Camp, and then if she could strike the broad road she’d be all right.

Walking rapidly through the woods she suddenly fancied that she hard a low moan, as though from someone in pain.

“It’s a tramp perhaps,” she thought.  “He may be in trouble.  Well, tramp or no tramp I must help him.  I’ll see.”

Unafraid, Nora walked to the spot whence the cry had proceeded.  Her eye fell upon an object huddled together on the ground.  As it was out of the beaten path she stepped from branches and logs to stones and rocks before she reached it.  She stooped down and gazed at it intently; then she uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“It’s Miss Ethel!” she gasped.  “God help her.”

She was right.  There lay Ethel Hollister—­the girl who had never liked her—­the girl from whom, no matter how hard she might try, Nora could get nothing beyond a cool “Thank you very much, Nora.”