Caught its breath with many a waking scintilla of light in the pointed flash of pool and stream!
A momentary, broken arc, a shattered rainbow dividing the flood of dusk above from the gulf of darkness below; and then--and then the triumphant cry in each gasping throat:
"They've got us! They see us! Now--now for the message: 'Two strange girls with us. You....'"
But there the Lightning's lore suddenly gave out, her signaling memory, as the news was vivaciously transmitted by staccato dot and lengthier dash, the latter being the same quarter-circle once described in a single movement to the right.
Over the valley the message was hung up. It was hung up in Pem's heart, too,--and the honor, the fair grace, of boyhood with it.
If old Round-top unhesitatingly played up, "came across" with an invitation--an invitation to that alluring Get Together at the winter palace of the Snowbirds, then she would feel that a nickum's rudeness was atoned for--and Jack at a Pinch might go his graceless road, never to prove a friend in need to her again--not if she knew it!
"Invite them to the picnic ... and don't forget the cocoa!"
The valley fairly bristled with the promptness of it--the skilled directness of the message, so rapidly, so spontaneously given that the poised Lightning on the crag was hard-pressed to keep up with the meaning--to read the handwriting of fire and give the interpretation thereof.
Old Round-top had seized the shining hour. The Henkyl Hunters were no "chuffs", no conundrums, with the strange riddle of incivility up a sleeve.
"'Invite them to the picnic--and don't forget the cocoa!'" Tanpa laughed. "Just like them! We did promise to lay in a fresh supply of sundries, as we pass through the town to-night--if there's still a store left open. And that reminds me, girlies, that it's getting late. We have no right to keep the birds out of bed any longer, demoralizing the feathered world."
But the Lightning had recovered its morale, its memory, prompted by a Morse code-card excitedly snatched from a green breast pocket and explored by the light of the dwindling torch.
"Invite--your--friends--to--our--d-a-n-c-e," slowly spelled out Tomoke, giving back diamond for diamond.
She was beginning upon the word "A-ll", but the pine-knot winked itself out in a dazzlement on "dance,"--in an effulgence of sparks that fell like golden rain upon the hearts of the visitors.