"Hello! Now what are you two doing, philandering in this secluded spot?"
"Talking of subjects quite beyond your ken, my dear," drawled Cliff lazily.
"You won't catch your train if you don't come down to mother earth," laughed Nan.
Archer consulted his watch, and then bade the girls a hurried good-by and started off for the station. Nan linked her arm in Eleanor's and they proceeded leisurely to the parsonage, talking as they went. One sentence remained in Nan's mind, awakening there a long train of thought.
"The summer is over, Nan, and we are about to disband. We have, perhaps, had more gayety and less real happiness than in the years gone by. I think you know as well as I the reasons for this. You are the only one, I think, who could set some crooked matters straight. Suppose you see what you can do?"
Enigmatical as the words were, Nan understood their purpose, and when, on the last evening before the Andrews and the Hills were to leave Hetherford, they assembled at the manor, she had quite determined to follow Eleanor's suggestion. It was a custom of long standing for Nan, Mollie, and Eleanor to spend the last night of the season with the Lawrence girls, to talk over the events of the summer and to anticipate the future.
To-night, as they gathered around the wide fireplace in the drawing-room, a certain sadness hovered over them, subduing their voices, breaking the conversation with frequent spaces of silence. Their hearts were full of thoughts that were left unspoken. Jean's absence made itself strongly felt among them, so closely was she associated with every like occasion in the past.
"Nothing seems real without her," said Eleanor drearily. "This parting is like no other."
"I hate partings anyway," cried Mollie. "I am always so afraid that we will not come together again quite in the old way!"
"All things must change