In a moment Arthur and Brenda had offered Miss South their cordial good wishes. "I am more than glad to call you cousin," said Brenda, "and I do not know which to congratulate the more, you or Cousin Edward. But what will Julia and the Mansion do without you next year?"
"Oh, I shall be at the Mansion until after Easter," replied Miss South, "and for the remainder of the year I think that Nora and Anstiss are willing to do double work. Beyond that we cannot look at present."
"Arthur," said Brenda, as they moved away, "you are not half as cheerful to-day as you were at Agnes' wedding. You and Ralph seem to have changed places. It is he who is making every one laugh. It does not seem natural for you to be so serious."
Brenda seemed satisfied with Arthur's reply.
"For one thing," said Arthur, "I am thinking of poor Tom Hearst. I cannot help remembering that he was the life of everything then; it seems so hard that he should have been taken."
"Yes, yes," responded Brenda gently. "I, too, have been thinking about him. I was looking, last evening, at the photograph we had taken at the Artists' Festival—the group in costume with Tom in it. He was so happy then at the thought of going to Cuba; and now—just think, Arthur, it was only six months ago." Brenda's voice broke, she could hardly finish the sentence.
"There, there," interposed Arthur gently, "let us remember only that he died bravely;" and then in an unwonted poetical vein he recited a few lines beginning—
"How sleep the brave who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes bless'd!"
and Brenda, listening, was partly cheered, though even as her face brightened she averred that she did not wish ever to wholly forget Tom Hearst.
To Brenda, indeed, any allusion to the war was painful. She could not soon forget those first days of anxiety, and the anxious weeks of her convalescence, when it was not a question of whether she would write to Arthur or not, but of whether she could. But now, with the future spreading so brightly before them, it was hardly the time to dwell on the mistakes of the past.