Selina had not forgotten a certain extravagance she longed for. "And those ankle-strap slippers, Mamma, may I have them?"
Maud brought her a letter portfolio, Juliette a little crêpe scarf, Adele a case for photographs and Amanthus the dearest bangle for her bracelet, if she'd owned a bracelet. Amanthus didn't always remember things. The four came in a body with their gifts and stood about amid the litter of preparation and packing, with embarrassment, almost with wistfulness.
At last Maud broke forth. Judy and Adele flushed as she spoke and Amanthus looked disturbed, but they evidently all stood with her in what she said. "We've been talking about you, Selina. It's as if we still need you and you no longer need us. And watching you, we can see you're different in other ways. You've been giving in, just as you've always given in more than any of us, letting your mother get you the clothes she wants you to have rather than what you want, and pack your trunk when we know how you want to pack it yourself. You're just the same in this way seemingly, but in reality you're not the same at all. You know now that you want your own way about the clothes, and you know you want to pack your trunk. You've been slower coming to it than any of the rest of us, except Amanthus, who hasn't any idea what I'm talking about now, and probably never will have. Her mother or her husband or somebody'll always pack her trunks and she'll thank them beautifully and sweetly and mean it. But you know now you want to do it all for yourself, and it makes you different. And we've had to decide you don't need us, because you've made all your plans and arrived at your decisions without us?"
Selina looked from one to the other of them. Was it so? Did she not need them as in the past? She did not know herself. Certainly it was true that she passionately did want to pack her own trunk! How did they guess? What could she say to them? She embraced them all in turn, and kissed them tenderly.
Mr. Tate came round a full day too soon in his dates with roses for her to take on the journey, and Mr. Cannon brought her all the latest magazines. Mr. Welling came with a volume of what he explained were Dobsons by that fellow Austin. Mr. Welling was a wag.
"I'm sorry none of us have been able to qualify, Miss Selina, and this has to be the best I can do for you. There are rondeaux in it, I can vouch for that for I've looked to see, and I'm suspicious there are dittoes. But unfortunately there are not batteaux which would mean more in a place like Florida. But then, of course, you'll have Miss Tippecanoe," by which name he invariably spoke of Miss Pocahontas.
A dearth in news, or indeed in communication of any sort from Miss Diana, began to prove worrying as the day before leaving arrived, and a telegram was sent to Miss Pocahontas for reassurance.
By night her reply came:
Have wired Miss Talbot, and had answer. Expected on original date.
Miss Boswell and Miss 'Hontas were to leave Eadston in the late afternoon. Selina was to start in the early evening and meet them at one o'clock that night at the junction where she would board their train.