“And now good-bye till I come again,” said she.
We awaited the first letter from Stephen Duncan anxiously. There were no tidings of Louis, and he was feeling very much alarmed. He had inspected the house and was to begin repairs immediately. It was his intention to have a home for himself and his brothers, and to do his duty by them, with God’s help, in-so-far as he could. “And wherein I do succeed,” he wrote, “the work will be in a great measure due to your Christian counsel and solicitude. I shall always esteem it one of the fortunate steps of my life that I came to you, my dear friend, when I needed fatherly advice.”
February was dull and dreary, though we had little time to think of it. Not one busy bee could have been spared from the hive. Miss Churchill called ours a co-operative home, and I think it was. News came to Mr. Fairlie that his mother and sister had decided to go to Europe with a pleasant party. They would return to New York in April and sail in May.
“So I can look out for myself,” said Dick.
“Why do you not go with them?” asked Fan.
“I shouldn’t enjoy it if I did—to travel round with a parcel of women. Now if one could go with a man like Mr. Duncan!”
“That would be just perfection,” she returned eagerly.
He glanced at her in a peculiar manner. Something flashed across my mind at that instant. They liked each other very much. He was hurrying to get his house in order—Mrs. Whitcomb would be there—yes, it would all come around right.
It came faster than any one expected. The first week in March we were surprised by a visit from him. He had commenced furnishing and was in a quandary.
“And so I have come to consult, and to ask a tremendous favor of you, Mrs. Endicott,” he said. “I have gained Mrs. Whitcomb’s consent to come in company with you and see how she would like it. I want you and Miss Fanny and my little god-daughter to go back with me next week, and we will have a kind of family party. I have my dining-room and two guest-chambers furnished, though they want a woman’s graceful fingers to add some final touches. And now like Benedick ‘I will hear of nothing to the contrary.’”