Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/146

 darkness, the soft, black dark of a warm spring night before the moon has risen, when David presented himself at the kitchen door for the ostensible purpose of taking Elizabeth home. With rather trembling hands she took off her apron and put away her towels, and prepared to go with him. But their plan was not to be carried out so easily, or without any hitch.

"I will walk down the hill with you," announced Miss Miranda with somewhat disconcerting suddenness. "I have some things to take to Mrs. Donavan at the foot of the lane. I promised her some of my cabbage plants."

"We will take them," chorused the two conspirators, speaking together with such promptness that any one less preoccupied than Miss Miranda might have guessed that some project was on foot.

"No, I must see her myself," she persisted and set out with them, to their ill-concealed dismay.

"It is not very late and we can come back after she has left us," David found opportunity to say before Miss Miranda joined them with the cabbage plants.

They went down the hill without much of their usual talking and laughter, for Miss Miranda appeared absorbed in her own thoughts, and her two companions, perhaps a little appalled by their undertaking, seemed to have not much to say. They