“I don’t see how you did it, Louise,” panted the player; “it’s astonishing how you beat me.”

The lady on the bench made as if to answer, but ended by coughing hoarsely.

“Oh, dear child!” cried the first, dropping her mallet, and running to her.  “You ought to have put on your shawl!” She lifted the knit shawl lying beside her on the bench, and laid it across the other’s shoulders, and drew it close about her neck.

“Oh, don’t!” said the other.  “It chokes me to be bundled up so tight.”  She shrugged the shawl down to her shoulders with a pretty petulance.  “If my chest’s protected, that’s all that’s necessary.”  But she made no motion to drape the outline which her neatly-fitted dress displayed, and she did not move from her place, or look up at her anxious friend.

“Oh, but don’t sit here, Louise,” the latter pleaded, lingering near her.  “I was wrong to let you sit down at all after you had got heated.”

“Well, Grace, I had to,” said she who was called Louise.  “I was so tired out.  I’m not going to take more cold.  I can always tell when I am.  I’ll put on the shawl in half a minute; or else I’ll go in.”

“I’m sure there’s nothing to keep me out.  That’s the worst of these lonely places:  my mind preys upon itself.  That’s what Dr. Nixon always said:  he said it was no use in air so long as my mind preyed upon itself.  He said that I ought to divert my mind all I could, and keep it from preying upon itself; that it was worth all the medicine in the world.”

“That’s perfectly true.”

“Then you ought n’t to keep reminding me all the time that I’m sick.  That’s what starts my mind to preying upon itself; and when it gets going once I can’t stop it.  I ought to treat myself just like a well person; that’s what the doctor said.”

The other stood looking at the speaker in frowning perplexity.  She was a serious-faced girl, and now when she frowned her black brows met sternly above her gray eyes.  But she controlled any impulse she had to severity, and asked gently, “Shall I send Bella to you?”

“Oh, no!  I can’t make society out of a child the whole time.  I’ll just sit here till the barge comes in.  I suppose it will be as empty as a gourd, as usual.”  She added, with a sick and weary negligence, “I don’t even know where Bella is.  She’s run off, somewhere.”

“It’s quite time she should be looked up, for tea.  I’ll wander out that way and look for her.”  She indicated the wilderness generally.

“Thanks,” said Louise.  She now gratefully drew her shawl up over her shoulders, and faced about on the bench so as to command an easy view of the arriving barge.  The other met it on her way to the place in the woods where the children usually played, and found it as empty as her friend had foreboded.  But the driver stopped his horses, and leaned out of the side of the wagon with a little package in his hand.  He read the superscription, and then glanced consciously at the girl.  “You’re Miss Breen, ain’t you?”