Carolyn and Kathryn were taking a great interest in swimming in this junior year and now all three were working hard at the life-saving tests. Betty longed to have some riding lessons to ride “properly,” with Lucia, for from little things that Lucia said from time to time, she fancied this to be Lucia’s last year at Lyon High. But Betty could not do everything. Riding would be just as good another year, her mother said.
And now, one lovely week-end, Mrs. Murchison sent for Mrs. Lee. The poor bewildered old lady in the suite upstairs was slipping quietly over the border from life here to life eternal. Betty went over to stay with Lucia, who had told Betty before how they had put the dolls away when Grandmother Ferris had seemed to come to herself for a while, though weak, sleeping a great deal and finally falling asleep not to waken.
“This takes away one reason for Mother’s staying here,” said Lucia to Betty after the funeral, when Betty came after school to stay all night again. “This is what I wanted to talk over with you, Betty. I wrote everything to my father, Betty, and I wrote again to Italy where he is now. I haven’t had a word from him in reply to all I said, or about coming, just cards about where he was and how soon he would reach Italy and how he was having the palao opened in Milan. Now that may mean something. I left the letter where mother would find it. And Betty, when your mother was here, my mother broke down a little over grandmother’s going, and I heard her say, ‘Oh, I’m so lonely, Mrs. Lee!’ And your mother asked her right away if her ‘husband’ would not soon return from his African trip. Evidently you hadn’t told your mother a word.”
“Oh, no, Lucia! Of course not!”
“Mother said she hoped that he’d get back safely, and your mother said that the hardest thing in the world was for families to be separated. Probably she has heard some talk about Mother’s staying here so long, but anyhow she saw this sort of thing is all wrong, whether I get educated in America or not. I’d stay here another year alone if I could get mother to go back to my father!”
“Would you, Lucia? I wish you would stay. I hate to lose you for a friend.”
“You’re never going to lose me, Betty Lee! I need you. Don’t you think it would be nice to have a real old Italian palao to come to when you ‘go abroad,’ as they say here.”
“It isn’t possible,” grinned Betty. “That, Lucia, is a fairy story!”
This conversation took place at the scene of previous confidences, Lucia’s own room. And when the girls started to the drawing room a little later, they passed a room in which Betty heard the sound of a machine. “Peep in a moment, Betty,” Lucia suggested, stopping Betty as she would have gone more rapidly.
Betty looked in at the open door. There sat Giovanna at the machine, and there in a chair beside her sat a dark-haired girl, simply but neatly dressed, and weaving a needle in and out in the meshes of some beautiful lace. As the girls paused, the needle stopped and the girl turned her head in their direction, to smile at Lucia.