Strangely enough, Cissy did not hail this corroboration of her dislike to young Masterton with the liveliness one might have expected.  Perhaps it was because Piney Tibbs was no longer present, having left Cissy at the parsonage and returned home.  Still she enjoyed her visit after a fashion, romped with the younger Windibrooks and climbed a tree in the security of her sylvan seclusion and the promptings of her still healthy, girlish blood, and only came back to cake and tea and her new hat, which she had prudently hung up in the summer-house, as the afternoon was waning.  When they returned to the house, they found that Mr. Windibrook had gone out with his visitor, and Cissy was spared the advertisement of a boisterous escort home, which he generally insisted upon.  She gayly took leave of the infant Windibrook and his mother, sallied out into the empty road, and once more became conscious of her new hat.

The shadows were already lengthening, and a cool breeze stirred the deep aisles of the pines on either side of the highway.  One or two people passed her hurriedly, talking and gesticulating, evidently so preoccupied that they did not notice her.  Again, a rapid horseman rode by without glancing round, overtook the pedestrians, exchanged a few hurried words with them, and then spurred swiftly away as one of them shouted after him, “There’s another dispatch confirming it.”  A group of men talking by the roadside failed to look up as she passed.  Cissy pouted slightly at this want of taste, which made some late election news or the report of a horse race more enthralling than her new hat and its owner.  Even the toilers in the ditches had left their work, and were congregated around a man who was reading aloud from a widely margined “extra” of the “Canada City Press.”  It seemed provoking, as she knew her cheeks were glowing from her romp, and was conscious that she was looking her best.  However, the Secamps’ cottage was just before her, and the girls were sure to be on the lookout!  She shook out her skirts and straightened her pretty little figure as she approached the house.  But to her surprise, her coming had evidently been anticipated by them, and they were actually—­and unexpectedly—­awaiting her behind the low whitewashed garden palings!  As she neared them they burst into a shrill, discordant laugh, so full of irony, gratified malice, and mean exaltation that Cissy was for a moment startled.  But only for a moment; she had her father’s reckless audacity, and bore them down with a display of such pink cheeks and flashing eyes that their laughter was checked, and they remained open-mouthed as she swept by them.