But the early spring was rushing on again and every leaf and spear and weed grew as if by magic.
One morning they had a visitor who came in a carriage, and Miss Holmes glanced out in some surprise.
"Why, it's my friend Miss Alwood—you remember Miss Grace, Laverne. I haven't seen her this long while," and the next instant she was welcoming her warmly.
"We thought you had dropped out of existence. Why, even the Dawsons have heard nothing from you—let me see—you went down to Santa Cruz with an invalid lady——"
"Yes." Miss Alwood gave a short amused sound that was hardly a laugh, and continued: "Well, there was plenty of money, but she was about as queer as they make them. She had come from Baltimore, but she had some of the worst New England features, though I think they do not belong altogether to the Puritan birthright. But it kept one on the alert attending to her whims. When she had been there a month her brother came to see her. He thought she had better go on farther south—I think she had consumption, the sort of wasting away without a cough. While we were making preparations she was taken down to her bed. Mr. Personette had to return here on urgent business matters. Four weeks later she died. So he came back and there was the burial and all——"
Miss Alwood paused and a flush with an amused expression passed over her face.
"And so you were released from bondage," suggested Miss Holmes; and she, somehow, smiled, too.
"And accepted another. Mr. Personette, being a widower, made me an offer of marriage. We are to be a not very far-away neighbor, as he owns a house on Mason Street, and is really well-to-do, as we say at home. There is a son of seventeen, a daughter two years younger, and one of twelve. I went to hunt you up, but found the place deserted, then looked up Miss Gaines and have been spending a week over wedding gowns, though it is to be just a quiet marriage in church. He has had housekeepers that were unsatisfactory, indeed, he was afraid the last one would marry him out of hand," and this time she did laugh heartily. "So you see I have made my fortune the first of the trio."
"Let me congratulate you on your good fortune. I suppose it is that."
"Why, yes, as far as one can see. I'm not a romantic young girl, and he is just forty, has made one fortune and lost it, and now is—well, he spends money as if there would be no end to it. Do you remember the old story of the bees that were taken to a place where the flowers bloomed all the year round, and ceased laying up honey? That seems the way with so many here. There were people who lost everything in the great fire and in no time were on their feet again. It is in the air, I think, or perhaps the fusion of so many people from everywhere. And now Mr. Personette is prospering, and I am to share the prosperity and have a home of my own, and like the bees, I'm not going to worry about the future. You see I am already a recreant Yankee. Where is your little girl?"