“Dear Friend Muriel:
“I hoped to have good news to tell you today, but, after all, I am not to have my longed-for visit with you. Last night Helen received a cablegram from our father telling us to join them at once in London, and so we are to depart without delay, as Dad has reserved passage for us on the steamship ‘The Liverpool,’ which leaves its dock tomorrow at dawn.
“Dear good friend, don’t forget me! I don’t know what this command from our father means. I surely hope that mother is not ill, but, of course, it is a command which Helen and I must obey. I shall write you, however, as soon as I reach the other side of the broad Atlantic.
“Tell your grandfather, please, how grateful I am and ever shall be to him for having permitted me to share his home for that wonderful, never-to-be-forgotten month.
“Muriel, come what may, believe me when I say that next to Helen your friendship is dearer to me than that of any girl whom I know.
“This letter sounds as though I hardly expect to come back to the only country under the sun, but that isn’t true. Heaven willing, I’ll return when I’m twenty-one, if I have to remain over there until then.
“Goodbye, Storm Maiden, your closer-than-a-brother friend,
“Gene.”
The sun was still shining and the waves sparkling, the birds still singing and the flowers blooming when Muriel had deciphered the message in that letter, but the glory of the day was gone for her and there was no echo of song in her heart.
She arose, saddened, and after replacing the Second Reader in its niche, climbed the steep trail up the cliff and returned to the light.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE STORM.
The wonderful weather continued and, if there was loneliness in the heart of the girl because her friend and comrade seemed to be so far, so very far away, it was unnoticed by the old man who loved her, for whenever he was near, her clear voice rang out its sweetest and her welcoming smile always awaited him.
June came, and Captain Ezra, returning from town about noon on a day that was a-gleaming with blue in sky and sea (as only a day in June can be), produced a letter.
How the girl hoped that it was from her friend across the water, but, instead, it was from Doctor Winslow. In it he stated that he was coming to Tunkett for a week’s rest, as he had had a most strenuous winter, and, since he was not as young as he had been, he felt the need now and then of a period of relaxation. He was eager to see his comrade of boyhood days. He recalled the happy, carefree times when, barefooted, they had tramped over the salt meadows, swam together, breasting even the outer breakers, or had fished, talking quietly for hours of their plans for the future, which had proved so unlike.
“Ez, old pal,” the doctor had written, “I want especially to talk over with you something which has been much in my thoughts of late, and that is the future of the girl whom you love so dearly and whom, for that matter, we both love.
“You are not as unreasonable now as you formerly were, and so I again shall broach the subject of Muriel’s education. As I have said before, I wish to pay her tuition as my share, for am I not her Uncle Lem?
“You and I are advanced in years, Ezra, and we’re not always going to be here to protect Muriel. Think how unfitted she now is to face the world with no knowledge whatever of its ways; but more of this later when I come.”