And yet with the almost physical unity of their years of life together, each knew the other’s thoughts.

She flung herself against him as though she had cried out to him.  He put his arms strongly, tenderly about her, as though he had answered.

With no words she had cried out, silently, desperately to him, “Hold me!  Hold me!”

And with no words, he had answered, silently, desperately, “No one can hold you but yourself.”

* * * * *

A shouting babble of voices rose in the distance.  The children crying to each other came out of the house-door and raced down the flag-stone walk.  “There they are!  In the garden!  By the onion-bed!  Father!  Mother!  We’ve been looking for you everywhere.  Toucle says if you’ll let her, she’ll boil down some maple syrup for us to wax on ice for dessert.”

They poured into the garden, children, cat and fox-terrier, noisy, insistent, clamorous.  Mark, always frankly greedy of his mother’s attention, pushed in jealously between his parents, clinging to his mother’s knees.  He looked up in her face and laughed out, his merry peal, “Oh, Mother, what a dirty face!  You’ve been suspiring and then you’ve wiped your forehead with your dirty hand, the way you say I mustn’t.  How funny you look!  And you’ve got a great, long tear in your sleeve, too.”

Behind them, tiny, smooth and glistening, Eugenia Mills strolled to the edge of the garden, as far as the flag-stones went, and stood waiting, palpably incapable of taking her delicate bronze slippers into the dust.

“You’ve missed a kitchen call from that lively, earthy old Mrs. Powers and her handsome daughter-in-law,” she announced casually.  “Toucle says they brought some eggs.  What a stunning creature that Nelly is!  There’s temperament for you!  Can’t you just feel the smouldering, primitive fire hidden under that scornful silence of hers?”

“Mother, may we tell Toucle to put the syrup on to boil?” begged Elly.  Her hair was tangled and tousled, with bits of bark sticking in it, and dried mud was caked on her hands and bare legs.  Marise thought of the repugnance she must have aroused in Eugenia.

“Mother,” said Paul, “Mr. Welles is going to give me a fishing-rod, he says.  A real one.  Boughten.”

“Oh, I want one too!” cried Mark, jumping up and down.  “I want one too.”

“You’re too little.  Mother, isn’t Mark too little?  And anyhow, he always breaks everything.  You do, Mark, you know you do.  I take care of my things!”

* * * * *

Someone in the confusion stepped on the fox-terrier’s toes and he set up a shrill, aggrieved yelping.  The children pawed at her with dirty hands.

“Good-evening, Mr. Marsh,” said Eugenia, looking over her shoulder at the dark-haired figure in flannels approaching from the other house.  She turned and strolled across the grass to meet him, as white and gleaming as he.