“But her Aunt Elinor is going to France, and you know the James Camerons’ house is in quarantine. That leaves only the Vermont Camerons—”
“Oh, yes. I remember, now, there was a third brother. They have their plans, probably.”
And that was absolutely all Bess could get her mother to say.
“But, Mother,” she almost sobbed at last, “I—I asked her!”
“Then I am afraid you will have to un-ask her,” said Mrs. Royce. “We really can’t get another person into the house this summer, with your Aunt Grace and her family coming in July.”
Then it was that Elliott discovered the impasse. Try as she would, she could find no way out, and she lost a good deal of sleep in the attempt. To have to do something 22 that she didn’t wish to do was intolerable. You may think this very silly; if you do, it shows that you have not always had your own way. Elliott had never had anything but her own way. That it had been in the main a sweet and likable way did not change the fact. And how Stannard would gloat over her! He had had to do the thing himself, but secretly she had looked down on him for it, just as she had always despised girls who lamented their obligation to go to places where they did not wish to go. There was always, she had held, a way out, if you used your brains. Altogether, it was a disconcerted, bewildered, and thoroughly put-out young lady who, a week later, found herself taking the train for Highboro. The world—her familiar, complacent, agreeable world—had lost its equilibrium.
CHAPTER II
THE END OF A JOURNEY
Hours later, from a red-plush, Pullmanless train, Elliott Cameron stepped down to three people—a tall, dark, surprisingly pretty girl a little older than herself, a chunky girl of twelve, and a middle-sized, freckle-faced boy. The boy took her bag and asked for her trunk-checks quite as well as any of her other cousins could have done and the tall girl kissed her and said how glad they were to have the chance to know her.