And in spite of all previous warning Magnus looked round the breakfast room for Cherry, and not finding her, felt very much aggrieved.
There was no lack of talk and laughter, however; the joy of those four people in being together was extreme, and of course, the others did not miss Cherry, not having expected her, but Magnus did. The reserved, dainty girl had taken him by storm. They had always been inseparable as children, and as true boy and girl, though never with any freedom on her part, even then, that passed the prettiest bounds. Now she had stepped off a little, regarding him from a safer grown-up distance, and Magnus was wild to annihilate both time and space, and whatever else came in his way. She had bloomed out into something much rarer than he knew could be in the world, and Cadet Kindred surrendered at discretion, and without a summons. I believe he found that last fact the crowning charm. If Cherry had held forth her little finger to draw him on, or had in any way shortened that new indefinable distance between him and her, I think Magnus would have struck off a percentage from her perfections. It vexed and bewitched him equally.
So the young man sat opposite the open window, where the smoke from the other house curled softly into view, and thought himself ill-used and happy in about half and half mixture. He watched the winding path, but it remained empty. Then he looked at his sisters; how handsome they were, too! Splendid girls, both of them; and wouldn't they make a stir in first-class camp? Of course his mother had always been perfection. And here his eyes came round to her, with a smile of such joyful love and content that poor Mrs. Kindred was very near making a goose of herself, as she would have phrased it. What it was to have her boy home again!
"But I cannot see why they don't move down here!" Magnus broke forth irrelevantly. "Living on there all by themselves in that stupid old house."
"Stupid?" cried Violet. "Why, it's the very prettiest house in all the State."
"You had best not let Cherry hear you say such things," remarked Rose. "She loves that house with all her heart."
"Stuff!" said Magnus. "She'll have to leave it some time."
"She will not while her father lives," said Mrs. Kindred.
"Why, mother, girls do it every day."
"Girls—but not Cherry," the mother answered; and Magnus was so charmed with the saying, and the fair little pedestal on which it placed his heart's delight, that he adopted it for a private phrase of his own; used many times afterwards, it may be said, when "girls—but not Cherry," were around.