Three late-comers found seats there when the game was almost over—­ Sammy’s sister Mary, an extremely handsome young woman in a linen gown and wide hat, her brother Tom, a correct young man whose ordinary expression indicated boredom, and their aunt, a magnificent personage in gray silk, with a gray silk parasol.  Their arrival caused some little stir.

“Well, for pit—!” exclaimed a stout matron seated immediately in front of them.  “If it ain’t Mary Peneyre—­an’ Thomas too!  An’ Mrs. Bond—­for goodness’ sake!  Well, say, you folks are strangers.  When ’jew all get here?  Sammy never told me you was coming!”

“How d’you do, Mrs. Pidgeon?” said Sammy’s aunt, cordially.  “No, Samantha didn’t know it.  We came—­ah—­rather suddenly.  Yes, I’ve not been in Wheatfield for ten years.  We got here on the two o’clock train.”

“Going to stay long, Mary?” said Mrs. Pidgeon, sociably.

“Only a few days,” said Miss Peneyre, distantly. ("That’s the worst of growing up in a place,” she said to herself.  “Every one calls you ’Mary’!”) “We are going to take Samantha back to New York with us,” she added.

“Look out you don’t find you’re a little late,” said Mrs. Pidgeon, with great archness.  “I’m surprised you ain’t asked me if there’s any news from Sammy.  Whole village talking about it.”

The three smiles that met her gaze were not so unconcerned as their wearers fondly hoped.  Mrs. Bond ended a tense moment when she exclaimed, “There’s Sammy now!” and indicated to the others the last row of seats, where a girl in blue, with a blue parasol, was sitting alone.  Mrs. Pidgeon delivered a parting shot.  “Sammy might do lots worse than Anthony Gayley,” said she, confidentially.  “Carpenter or no carpenter, he’s an elegant fellow.  I thought Lizzie Philliber was ace high, an’ then folks talked some of Bootsy White.  I guess Bootsy’d like to do some hair-pulling.”

“I dare say it’s just a boy-and-girl friendship,” said Mrs. Bond, lightly, but trembling a little and pressing Mary’s foot with her own.  When they were climbing over the wooden seats a moment later, on their way to join Sammy, she added: 

“Oh, really, it’s insufferable!  I’d like to spank that girl!”

“Apparently the whole village is on,” contributed Tom, bitterly.

A moment later Sammy saw them; and if her welcome was a little constrained, it was merely because of shyness.  She settled down radiantly between her sister and aunt, with a hand for each.

“Well, this is fun!” said Sammy.  “Did you get my letter?  Were you surprised?  Are you all going to stay until September?”

Her happy fusillade of questions distressed them all.  Mary said the unwise thing, trying to laugh, as she had always laughed, at Sammy: 

“Don’t talk as if you were going to be married, Sammy!  It’s too awful—­you don’t know how aunty and I feel about it!  Why, darling, we want you to go back with us to New York!  Sammy—­”