Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/299

Rh see her friend daily, she at least expects a letter, and a week’s silence is something absolutely inexplainable and  hardly to be forgiven. Now the friendship of Amy and Brenda had at first been of this intense type, and of the  two Brenda had seemed the more devoted. But to this friendship one might apply the old fable of the moon and  the brooks, apply it at least in a way somewhat different  from the way in which it is usually applied. For while Brenda, like the moon, had many things to occupy her  attention; Amy, like one of the many brooks that admired  the moon, had no other person within her vision quite  so dazzling as Brenda. Amy, to be sure, in admiring Brenda, had not found her absolutely faultless; indeed, as  she thought of her, it seemed as if it was on account of  her faults that she had liked the bright, almost dashing  girl, so unlike any one she had ever known.

When Brenda’s failure to visit her was explained by the news (picked up in some way by Fritz) that she was  away, Amy naturally enough looked for a letter. But when, after a reasonable time, it did not come, she tried to  put Brenda out of her mind. If she was not wholly successful in this, she at least did not mention her name, and she found a little consolation in writing sad verses.

At last one afternoon, as they sat in their favorite place by the rocks, Fritz could stand it no longer.

“You must be pretty desperate,” he cried. He had been watching Amy for half an hour out of the corner of  his eyes, although ostensibly engaged in skipping stones in  the water, which happened then to be unusually calm.