d the man. I do beg your
pardon,--I had no business,--but I so like chess,--when it's any sort of
a game!"

While he spoke, he was looking about the base of the rock, and by good
fortune spied and pounced upon the bit of bright-colored ivory, which
had rolled and rested itself against a hummock of sod.

"May I see it out?" he begged, approaching, and putting the piece upon
the board. "You must have played a good deal," looking at Sue.

"We play often at home, my sister and I; and I had some good practice
in"--There she stopped.

"In the hospital," said Martha, with the sharp little way she took up
sometimes. "Why shouldn't you tell of it?"

"Has Miss Josselyn been in the hospitals?" asked Dakie Thayne, with a
certain quick change in his tone.

"For the best of two years," Martha answered.

At this moment, seeing how Dakie was breaking the ice for them, up came
Miss Craydocke and Leslie Goldthwaite.

"Miss Leslie! Miss Craydocke! This lady has been away among our
soldiers, in the hospitals, half through the war! Perhaps--did you
ever"--But with that he broke off. There was a great flush on his face,
and his eyes glowed with boy-enthusiasm lit at the thought of the war,
and of brave men, and of noble, ministering women, of whom he suddenly
found himself face to face with one.

The game of chess got swept together. "It was as good as over," Martha
Josselyn said. And these five sat down together among the rocks, and in
half an hour, after weeks of mere "good-mornings," they had grown to be
old friends. But Dakie Thayne--he best knew why--left his fragment of a
question unfinished.

CHAPTER XII.

CROWDED OUT.

The "by and by" people came at last: Jeannie and Elinor, and Sin Saxon,
and the Arnalls, and Josie Scherman. They wanted Leslie,--to tell and
ask her half a hundred things about the projected tableaux. If it had
only been Miss Craydocke and the Josselyns sitting together, with Dakie
Thayne, how would that have concerned them,--the later comers? It would
only have been a bit of "the pines" preoccupied: they would have found a
place for themselves, and gone on with their own chatter. But Leslie's
presence made all the difference. The little group became the nucleus of
the enlarging circle. Miss Craydocke had known very well how this would
be.

They asked this and that of Leslie which they had come to ask; and she
would keep turning to the Josselyns and appealing to them; so they were
drawn in. T