"Oh, Bob," said Lucy from the depths of her bitter disappointment; "they might have let you have three days!"
Mrs. Gordon let fall the paper on the table and took Bob's hand in hers, while Elizabeth's eager, troubled eyes watched her closely.
"Will you go now,—this second?" asked William, standing puzzled and anxious by his mother's chair, unnoticed in the general confusion.
"MY ORDERS HAVE COME"
"No, not till to-morrow morning," said Bob, his surprise over and a hundred questions flitting through his brain. "Come, Mother, never mind! What's a day or two, anyway? I have to go, so let's be cheerful about it. Buck up, Captain Lucy! You be a sport."
"I will," said Lucy, smiling through the tears that trembled on her lashes. "Look at Marian, Mother. She's worried to death about us." For at sight of Mrs. Gordon's white face Marian had risen from her place overcome with sympathy, roused for the moment from herself and vainly trying to summon words of courage for another instead of asking them for her own need.
Mrs. Gordon looked around at them all and smiled, the color coming slowly back to her pale cheeks. "It was so sudden, Bob,—I couldn't realize it at first," she said, patting Bob's shoulder as he bent anxiously over her. "But of course I ought to have known your orders might come at any moment. Your father told me so. But you get so many long envelopes marked Official Business that I never thought when I saw that one. Now we'll have to get to work in earnest. We'll finish our lunch, children, and go up-stairs and pack."