It was a new country
to Caroline; she found no landmarks whatever. The road glared with
heat, the dust was powdery, the shade nowhere, once they had cleared
the wood. She sighed with fatigue and emptiness; it seemed a long
pull, and the harbor far from worth the voyage, when all was said
and done.
"What _did_ we want to get to this nasty hot road for, Rose-Marie?"
she cried pettishly, shifting from one long leg to the other,
shrugging a nervous, bony shoulder. "Oh, what's the sense of
anything, anyway?"
Rose-Marie turned a patient, clear brown eye toward her and shook
his head vaguely. Gnats buzzed about his flexible ears, and with a
swishing fanning motion he displaced them.
"If my back aches," she warned him callously, "you'll have to take
me home, you know! Tired or not. It feels as if it might, any
minute. I never used to get tired, this way."
A half mile along the road, set off to the left, among cool trees
and behind a great well sweep, she perceived suddenly a white farm
house. It stood alone, neighborless and well up on a drained,
southerly slope; smoke rose languidly from one of its chimneys.
"Perhaps they'll give us some milk, Rose-Marie," said Caroline, "and
farms usually have cookies. If there are any children there, you can
give 'em rides to pay for it!"
Rose-Marie nodded and they went on with some spirit.
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