But Lucy hated good-byes as much as he, and she knew how Bob hated them, and in past days they had always agreed to get them over as quickly as possible. So when Mrs. Gordon called from the edge of the dock, "Hurry, Bob dear! Father says to come," Lucy managed to put on the brightest kind of smile as Bob took leave of William and Marian. When he turned to her she said cheerfully, "Good luck, Bob, old boy, and we'll never stop thinking of you!" Brother and sister exchanged a bear hug that knocked Lucy's hat off onto the dock and then Bob, seizing his bag and raincoat, jumped down on the General Meigs' deck by his mother's side.
Bob looked back at the three faces watching him as the boat pulled out, of which William's was by far the most solemn, and waved his cap and called out a last good-bye.
Lucy, gazing after him, saw his face blur as her eyes filled up with sudden tears, but she winked them angrily away and turned to Marian, when the boat's white wake and stern were all that they could see. "Let's go home, Marian. I hate seeing people go, don't you?" were the inadequate words that came to her lips.
"Yes, I do," said Marian, who looked as though she could understand, and putting her hand through Lucy's arm she led the way back up the hill.
Once in the house again Lucy dropped down on the first resting-place at hand, which happened to be the piano-stool, and sat with hands clasped about one knee, staring idly before her. For a moment she could not take up the round of duties her mother had left her, nor look sensibly ahead to what came next. It was too strange and hard to realize that Bob was gone. That his brief leave was cut short and ended, and with it all the pleasant things she had planned for the time they should be together. "Bob's gone," she repeated to herself, and could not seem to go beyond the thought.
What roused her was Marian's coming suddenly over to take a seat beside her with a face so set with determination that Lucy looked at her in astonishment.
"There's no use sitting here and doing nothing, Lucy," Marian said decidedly. "It will only make you feel worse. Let's develop those pictures right away so that Bob will surely get them. I'll help if you will show me how, and William can watch us."
Lucy could hardly help laughing, far as she was from feeling jolly, at Marian's sudden assumption of authority. The change was almost startling from the self-absorbed passiveness out of which she could so seldom be roused, unless some one tried to make her do what she did not like. But in consequence her words had more effect now in distracting Lucy from her gloomy thoughts.