"Balfour wouldn't let any one spend much money on Eunice; he is so very independent, and wishes always to stand on his own feet. I never saw any one just like him."
"I agree with you, Priscilla, and I feel that we owe much to him for all he did for us in Annapolis; besides, he has given mother one or two letters to people in Wolfville, so that I fancy we shall be somewhat indebted to him here."
A few moments later Amy, in her little bedroom, reread a letter received from Fritz that morning. Its tone was so cheerful that it ought to have had an exhilarating effect on her; on the contrary, she was now less happy than before she received it. Fritz and his friend had already reached Chester on the east coast, and he wrote most enthusiastically of the charms of this little watering-place. Not one word of regret did he utter now over his separation from Mrs. Redmond's party. His time was apparently fully occupied with boating and driving excursions and other pleasures of the conventional summer resort. One sentence only, at the end, suggested that he had not forgotten what he had previously said to Amy.
"I am surprised that you have travelled so comfortably, with not a single accident to interfere with your pleasure; but if anything disagreeable should happen, then perhaps you will wish that you had some stronger person to help you out of your difficulty."
With a sigh Amy laid the letter in her bureau drawer, and as she did so her eye fell on an envelope addressed to Martine. Evidently she had picked it up with her own letters when she had brought them upstairs. The envelope was empty and hardly worth returning, but as she took it to drop into the waste basket, she looked, as one will, at the postmark. To her surprise, it was the same, "Chester," as on her own letter from Fritz. Then her mind flew back to the morning at Yarmouth, when she thought she had seen Martine wheeling down the side street with an unknown youth. The inference was now plain—in some way Martine had made the acquaintance of Fritz's friend, and was keeping up a correspondence with him. There was nothing very wrong in this in itself, except that it implied on Martine's part a certain amount of deception. "Taps," as Fritz called him, might have been a perfectly desirable friend for all the girls, and Fritz himself might have introduced him to Martine. She had had no opportunity to meet him on the boat. Yet even had he been an old friend of hers, there seemed to be no reason why she should not speak frankly about him. The discovery of this envelope reconciled Amy completely to Fritz's banishment. It was just as well that he and his friend had been sent off by themselves.
As to Martine, Amy decided that at present it was hardly well to speak to her of the letter, or even mention it to Mrs. Redmond. But for the rest of the day she was less cordial than usual toward Martine, and the young girl felt the change.
When Amy returned to the piazza, where she had left the others, she found only her mother and Martine. In a moment Priscilla joined them, looking bright and happy, and with unusual color in her fair cheeks.
"I've been down the street," she said, "and the town is so attractive that you must all come with me on an exploring tour; I can't tell why, but I feel more at home here than in most places. Wolfville seems less English than Annapolis; in fact, it is more like one of our own New England towns."
"That, I dare say," rejoined Mrs. Redmond, "is partly because it is a college town, but more likely because it was settled by Americans. I have an idea that hardly a Loyalist came here after the Revolution."
"Settled by Americans?" cried Martine. "Wasn't this all French country through here?"