"Rather a homesick Jack I fear he will be for a little while, unless he has recovered already. You know the young man has a way of recovering from depression."
"Jack and depression! What an impossible connection of ideas," laughed Clover. It seemed wonderful to herself that she could laugh. It was so long since she had. Three days is an interminable term of misery when one is twenty. They were bowling swiftly along Drexel Boulevard, beside the rich foliage and flower-beds of the landscape gardener; the air was clear and cool, and driving was quite a different thing when Mr. Van Tassel held the reins in this light vehicle, from the same exercise by favor of his solemn coachman, in the heavy and gorgeous carriage driven at a rate suited to Mrs. Bryant's sensitive condition.
Up Oakwood to Michigan Boulevard they sped, and soon the buggy stopped before one of the splendid stone mansions on that avenue.
"I shall be but one minute," said Mr. Van Tassel as he dismounted, and he kept his word. When Clover saw the brevity of the message given to the servant who answered his ring at the door, a faint wonder passed through her mind that Mr. Van Tassel had thought fit to bring it in person.
She was not inclined to quarrel with the fact, however, and when her escort returned and the heads of the spirited horses were turned back to the south, she inhaled a long breath of satisfaction.
"You have not found pleasanter weather than this where you have been, I am sure," she said.
"No," he answered, "nor pleasanter circumstances. I have thought of you a good many times though, Clover, and wished you might be with me."
He turned and looked into her eyes as he spoke, the innocent blue eyes that returned his gaze fully. Her pretty lips parted in her interest. "That was very good of you," she said sincerely. "I would like to go to every interesting place, so I am sure I should have echoed your wish. Where was it? At the seashore?"
"A part of the time,—yes."
"I wonder if I shall ever go East," exclaimed the girl with a sigh. "New York, Boston, Philadelphia, I should like them to be something beside names to me,—but what an idea!" She broke off with a short laugh. Her thoughts had indeed, like unruly steeds, kicked over the traces by which they had been harnessed to carry her by a safe road out of a perplexing labyrinth.