"Nonsense, child! South America isn't so very far away. The trouble is, you've had too long a vacation. It's well we're going back to Boston to-morrow, and that in a day or two you'll be at your books again."
"'At my books'—as if I were a six-year-old! I can't see why Harvard College gives even a day's vacation to its students, since their chief use of time seems to be to tease their sisters," and with this little burst of temper Martine's tears were blown away.
CHAPTER V
ANOTHER PARTING
To Martine the return to Boston after Christmas was far from cheerful. Not only was she still under the shadow of the parting with her father, but she began to feel that the approaching departure of Brenda would be rather hard to bear.
While her mother was spending a day or two with friends outside the city, Martine had to stand by and watch Brenda bidding good-bye to her family and friends. Her trunks were packed. The walls and mantelpieces were denuded of many little pictures and ornaments; for at the last she had decided that it was wiser to take some of her more personal belongings with her to make her new abode more homelike.
"I haven't taken a thing that you or your mother would need," Brenda explained; "only the little presents that have special associations for us. Your mother wrote me that she had a box or two of her own ornaments and pictures coming, so that she, too, could be reminded of home."
"Well, I wish our boxes were here now. It makes me so homesick to see those empty places on the wall. I don't see how you can be so cheerful."
"But everyone has been so kind. I didn't know how much everyone cared for me. So much has been done for me the past two weeks that I have hardly had time to pack. Arthur went back to Washington in despair yesterday. He is to join mother and me in New York. He said if we should try to start from Boston we'd never get off. Some one would plan some special function just to detain us."