“I know he wants you,” said Miss Graham.
“Has he spoken to you about it?”
“Yes, often.”
“I suppose I’ll have to be a million times older than I am now, before he thinks I’m able to take care of him,” said Ethel Blue.
“I don’t believe it will be a whole million years,” smiled Miss Graham.
“I shall feel dreadfully to leave Aunt Marion and Ethel Brown. I’ve never been away from Ethel Brown more than three or four days in my whole life,” said Ethel Brown’s twin cousin, “but if my father needs me, why of course, I must go.”
“Indeed you must,” returned Miss Graham, “and I’m sure he wants you just as soon as he can send for you.”
Ethel Blue was so overjoyed at this opinion, that she jumped up on the ledge on the top of the parapet running around the terrace, and danced with delight the fancy step—“One, two, three, back; one, two, three, back”—with which she and Ethel Brown were accustomed to express great satisfaction with the way in which life was treating them.
To Miss Graham’s horror, Ethel Blue’s enthusiasm blinded her eyes and her third back step took her off the parapet. She fell to the ground and rolled down the hill, her slender little body bouncing from rock to rock with cruel force and increasing speed.
Miss Graham gave a cry of distress and vaulted over the parapet with the ease which she had acquired in the gymnasium in her college days. Running the risk of rolling down hill herself, she bounded down the steep slope, and reached the foot almost as soon as did the body of the young girl, which lay very still, its head against the stone which had brought unconsciousness.