Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/232

206 light, she went out to the piazza and dropped into a hammock. The tall trees on the lawn threw dark patches of shade on the grass, that came and went as the evening wind moved the leafy branches, or vanished in one dull, uniform shadow as the full moon went behind some fleecy bit of cloud. A distant whippoorwill, singing his sad night song, was the only sound that broke the stillness. Bess swung there with her hands clasped above her head, and one  toe resting on the floor, enjoying the quiet  beauty of the night.

“How lovely it all is!” she thought. “And Fred has none of it to enjoy. Poor child! And with such a mother!”

The next evening was Saturday, and with it came the boys, all in high glee, for their school  had closed the day before, and the endless vista  of the long vacation and its prospective good  times was stretching before their eyes, and even  the trial of a rainy Saturday was not as hard to  bear, when thirteen weeks of continual Saturday lay in the near future.

“Phil and I had a fine scheme coming up here,” said Bert, as he took off his dripping