Lizzie Goodenough's son was the one child admitted to her friendship. In winter she permitted him to drag her to and from school on his sled, and in summer she allowed him to string thimble-berries for her on a long grass, which could be smuggled under the desk out of sight of the teacher and eaten at odd moments, when one stood in such dire need of refreshment in the dry country of learning. But, strictly speaking, she had no companions. For her grandfather a warm strong love beat in her little heart. Often she would clasp him about the neck with one thin arm, and with the other hand against his cheek, would gaze intently upon him until a simultaneous gleam of laughter shot into both their faces. Then she would nestle to him, quivering with a divine mirth which was the mask of diviner tears. For Nora Gage, Rachel entertained a silent dislike that expressed itself in manoeuvres to keep out of her way. If Nora entered a room, Rachel, if possible, left it. If the housekeeper, in her flapping slippers, shuffled out into the yard and cast herself down on the seat beneath the apple tree, where Rachel was playing, the child immediately gathered up her pebbles and shells and gravely sought another place. She spoke no oftener to the housekeeper than was necessary, and when she did speak, a weight of scorn trembled in her voice as if some feeling were silently gathering power. Nora Gage looked upon her with her little eyes, which were shrewd and meditative, exactly as a pig's are shrewd and meditative, and was apparently indifferent. But it was inconceivable that she did not hate her. A part of a battered wreck and a figure-head were, in the truest sense, Rachel's companions. Both were rooted fast where they had come ashore, but before they had reached that expanse of sand, the sea had had its way with them. They were by no means parts of the same craft, but torn, hurled, gnawed, they had been brought, by the rollicking mood of the ocean, past the fierce skirting of rocks outside and dashed there together on the shore of the bay, to become the playmates of a little child. Timber by timber the wreck had been washed small, and sometimes after a storm streams of rusty water that resembled blood trickled from its various bolts. Rachel, climbing out upon the wreck, sometimes felt the shallow water sucking between its timbers urging it to put to sea again; and, conscious of the tremble of eagerness in the poor maimed thing, she would pat the beams in passionate sympathy, and lay her cheek to them. Often she tried to dislodge the great hulk by placing her shoulder against it, and once, when the sea sucked off a plank and the tide flung it on the shore several rods away, she spent the following morning in hauling the dissevered portion back to the wreck and trying to hammer it into position. There was in her a curious susceptibility to the pathos of things.