“Will you take a row with me, Mira?” he asks as she approaches them. “I will tell you all about the society, mother, when we come back. I want to rest my brain for a while out on the water. You don’t mind, do you, mother?” he inquired.
“Oh, no,” she replied; “there is time enough before you return to the city.”
Mrs. Vivian, her eldest son Geron and his family, besides Mira, lived on the Vivian estate. The rest of the family had gone to the city to live, after their father died; as their wealth had decreased it was necessary. Tom was a lawyer; Libra had married a banker, and Scoris and Helen had employment. The next day the rest of the family arrived at the old homestead, for it was the mother’s birthday.
The family dinner had been a success, and they had all assembled in the old-fashioned drawingroom for the evening. Old friends had been invited to meet the city members of the family, especially Tom, who at that time was making a change in the industrial life not well understood by his friends or some members of the family. The gentlemen in the party had grouped around Tom to hear about it, for it had been a surprise to them that he had set aside his profession to take up this new line of work, for he had been a successful lawyer for so young a man. In another corner of the room some of the ladies were discussing the fashions, while still another group had centered around Nellie, Tom’s bride.
The room was long and this evening the music room doors had been thrown open on one side and the library opening into it also by large doors afforded an opportunity for each group to converse without interrupting the other. Mira had not been noticed when she and Jack Moberly (an old acquaintance) had passed out on the lawn. He had something to tell her, he whispered. He was going away nearly two thousand miles. An old uncle had offered him a position superior to anything he could ever expect if he stayed in Lake View. He wanted Mira to marry him and go, too.
“I cannot leave you,” he said; and she in her inexperience thought she couldn’t live without him. They knew her mother would never give her consent, for she had been heard to say that if a child of hers married under age she would break the marriage. No one had objected to Jack, but none had suspected the true state of affairs between him and Mira. She was so young.
They joined the rest of the family after a time and the evening passed, all having enjoyed the music and the singing, as well as the renewing of old friendships.
No one imagined that this birthday would be a day to be remembered as the turning point in more lives than one among them, but it was.
Libra, the eldest daughter, and her husband had returned to the city. Scoris and Helen, as well as Tom and Nellie, remained for a few days longer. The next morning Tom announced that he was going to take Nellie across the lake, and possibly they would go on farther and see some old friends, so would not be back until evening. The morning was bright and the water was as clear as crystal as they passed out from the small lake through the narrows into the larger body of water, then on to one of the small islands to the wonderful cave Tom had discovered when a boy. They had fastened the boat, climbed the steep hill and walked about half a mile through thickly grown shrubs, trees and brush, and over rocks; still no cave was in sight. Nellie looked at Tom inquiringly. She could see a high rock on one side with shrubs growing on its side in places, but no sign of an opening except almost at the top, but that was fully ten feet high.