"What's the matter with that taxicab, I wonder?" grumbled the latter. Standing beside Grace on the veranda, she was engaged in peering frowningly down the street. "When I make up my mind to go, I want to go. If that driver loiters along the way until he makes us miss our train, he'll hear what I have to say about it. The idea of him being so late——"
"Oh!" A sharp cry from Grace, whose gray eyes had been pensively staring up the street, put an abrupt end to Elfreda's remark. Coming down the street toward the house a bicycle appeared ridden by a youngster in the uniform of a messenger from a world-known telegraph company. Where was he going? Was the telegraphic communication he bore for her? Grace cried out again as she saw him stop before the gate and dismount.
Before he was fairly through the gate a lithe figure had darted down the steps toward him. Halfway up the walk they met. "Telegram for you, Miss Harlowe," announced the boy cheerily. "Sign here, please." Handing her a stub of a pencil, he held the book. With a shaking hand she managed to trace her name. As he turned and went down the walk whistling shrilly, Grace stared at the yellow envelope, hardly daring to open it.
In the same instant she felt Elfreda Briggs' reassuring arm about her. From the veranda the stout girl "could see" and had acted accordingly.
With a quick gasping breath Grace tore open the envelope, her trembling fingers fumbling at its contents. Then the world seemed suddenly to recede, leaving her alone with the unbelievable information: "Tom found. O.K. Sends love. Coming home Tuesday. Will wire train. David."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE NOON OF GOLDEN SUMMER
It was high noon on a gloriously sunshiny Indian summer day in November; one of the last fond concessions of Mother Nature to those who still mourn her departed "darling of the year." In a stately church on Chapel Hill, Golden Summer was at high noon in two hearts. To Tom Gray and Grace Harlowe, as they knelt for a moment before the altar, preparatory to taking their vows of eternal constancy and devotion, the world held but those two.
In the sweet silence that pervaded the overflowing church, the two young voices rang out clearly as they repeated their solemn pledges. Unflinchingly they had weathered their winter of despair. It was eminently fitting that happiness should now flood their loyal souls. Among the large assemblage that had gathered to witness the welding of that holy bond, there was not one person who did not rejoice with Grace and Tom.