A time of great running and calling ensued.  Cherry dropped on her knees beside him, and had his head on her arm for a moment; then her father took her place, and Alix, with an astonished look at the younger girl’s wet eyes, drew her sister away.  Immediately afterward Martin sat up, looked bewilderedly about from one face to another, looked at his scratched wrist and said “Gee!” in a thoughtful tone.  Anne, coming out with sandwiches, joined in the general laugh.

“You scared Cherry out of ten years’ growth!” Alix reproached Martin.

“I—­I thought he might have hurt himself!” Cherry said, in the softest of little-girl voices, and with her shy little head hanging.  Anne decided that it was becoming her clear duty to talk to Cherry.

“My dear,” she said, later that same afternoon, when by chance she was alone with her little cousin, “don’t you think perhaps it would be a little more dignified to treat Mr. Lloyd with more formality?  He likes you, dear, of course.  But a man wants to respect as well as like a pretty girl, and I am afraid—­Uncle has noticed it!” she interrupted herself quickly, as Cherry tossed her head scornfully.  “He spoke of it last night, and Alix tells me that you are calling Mr. Lloyd ‘Martin!’ Now, dearie, Martin Lloyd is fully ten years—–­”

“Then Alix is a tattle-tale!” Cherry said childishly.

“I don’t know about that,” Anne said gently, although perhaps it would have been more generous in her to add that Alix had made the comment gleefully, and almost admiringly.  “But that isn’t important.  The point is that you are only a young girl—­”

“I wish you would all mind your own royal business for about five seconds!” Cherry said, rudely and impatiently.  She was in her own room, rummaging on the upper shelf of the closet for a certain hat.  She secured the hat now, and ran unceremoniously away from her admonitor, to join Alix, Peter, and Martin for the daily ceremony of walking into the village for the mail.

Anne followed her downstairs sedately, perhaps a little dashed presently to discover that this dignified proceeding had lost her the walk.  They were all gone.  The house was very still, early summer sweetness was drifting through wide-opened windows and doors; the long day was slowly declining.  In the woods close to the door a really summery hum of insect life was stirring.  Hong, in dull minor gutturals, jabbered somewhere in the far distance to a friend.  Anne peeped into the deserted living room, softened through all its pleasant shabbiness into real beauty by the shafts of sunset red that came in through the casement windows; and was deliberating between various becoming occupations—­for Martin might walk back with the girls—­when her uncle called her.

He was sitting in the little room that was still called his office, but that was really his study now, and the late afternoon light, through the replaced rose vine, streamed in on the shabby books and the green lampshade and the cluttered desk.