But at last they finished the breakfast and shoved their chairs back to
go and look at the car. Mr. Severn and his wife had eaten long ago and
gone about their early morning duties, and it had been Marilyn's duty
to do the honors for the guests, so she drew a sigh of relief, and,
evading Laurie's proffered arm slid into the pantry and let them go
alone.
But when she glanced through the dining-room window a few minutes later
as she passed removing the dishes from the table, she saw Mark upon his
knees beside the car, looking up with his winning smile and talking to
Opal, who stood close beside him all attention, with her little boy
attitude, and a wide childlike look in her big effective eyes.
Something big and terrible seemed to seize Marilyn's heart with a
vise-like grip, and be choking her breath in her throat. She turned
quickly, gathered up her pile of dishes and hurried into the pantry, her
face white and set, and her eyes stinging with proud unshed tears.
A few minutes later, dressed in brown riding clothes exquisitely
tailored, and a soft brown felt hat, she might have been seen hurrying
through the back fence, if anybody had been looking that way, across
the Joneses' lot to the little green stable that housed a riding horse
that was hers to ride whenever she chose. She had left word with Naomi
that she was going to Economy and would be back in time for lunch, and
she hoped in her heart that when she returned both of their guests
would have departed. It was perhaps a bit shabby of her to leave it all
on her mother this way, but mother would understand, and very likely be
glad.
So Lynn mounted her little brown horse and rode by a circuitous way,
across the creek, and out around the town to avoid passing her own
home, and was presently on her way up to the crossroads down which
Laurie Shafton had come in the dark midnight.
As she crossed the Highway, she noticed the Detour, and paused an
instant to study the peculiar sign, and the partly cleared way around.
And while she stood wondering a car came swiftly up from the Economy
way past the Blue Duck Tavern. The driver bowed and smiled and she
perceived it was the Chief of Police from Economy, a former resident of
Sabbath Valley, and very much respected in the community, and with him
in the front seat, was another uniformed policeman!
With a sudden constriction at her heart Marilyn bowed and rode on. Was
he going to Sabbath Valley? Was there truth in the rumor that Mark was
in trouble? She looked back to see if he had turned down the Highway,
but he halted the car with its nose pointed Sabbath Valleyward and got
out to examine the Detour on the Highway. She rode slowly and turned
around several times, but as long as she was in sight his car remained
standing pointed toward the Valley.