Wythie and Rob kissed the tall boy with tears which they did not try to keep back, and the dear Grey mother held him close.
"Good-bye, my dear; good-bye, dear Bartlemy," she whispered. "I am so sorry, but I fear we can do nothing but be sorry. Learn to be happy; one disappointment in the beginning of life will not harm, but will strengthen you, and remember we all love you, and shall watch your every step with anxious pride."
"Good-bye, Mardy Grey. The little grey house has given me much, but it has denied me its best gift," said Bartlemy. He looked once more at Prue, standing a little aloof, pale, sorry, ashamed, but not relenting, and last of all he took her hand without a word. The door closed behind him, and with his footsteps down the flags died away the last echo of the unbroken tramp of Battalion B, which had brought cheer to the little grey house for more than four years.
"For just you and Basil can never be the battalion," said Rob reproachfully to Bruce, as if it were his fault.
Wythie and Basil went away to their new home and Bruce went with them. Bartlemy was to start on a train that stopped on signal at Fayre at half-past three in the morning. It was a dismal going away, and the Greys remembered how much they should miss not only Bartlemy but the kind Commodore whose very voice was a cordial. He would return in two months, leaving Bartlemy abroad to study.
"Of course time, and the work he loves so much, and the glorious pictures and architecture he is to see for the first time, will heal Bartlemy's wound, Rob," said Mrs. Grey, as she and her second daughter lingered after Prue had gone soberly up-stairs, leaving them to themselves. "And Rob, only fancy! I have had a letter from Arthur Stanhope in the last mail to-night announcing his coming here to-morrow, avowedly to ask little Prudy to marry him. I must take to cap and spectacles, for she is my baby—yet after all, she is eighteen."
"To-morrow! The very day poor Bartlemy sails! It is altogether too much like that game you used to play with us when we were babies, sticking bits of paper on your finger-tips, and crying: 'Fly away, Jack, fly away, Jill! Come again, Jack, come again, Jill!' I do think he might have waited! Yet how could he know?" cried Rob.
"It is a good letter, manly, straightforward—I left it up-stairs, or I would show it to you," said her mother with a half laugh at Rob's vehemence. "He says he will not assume that I know that he wants to marry our Prue, though he feels sure that we must have seen how profoundly he admires her. He wants me to receive him to-morrow with the intention of asking her to marry him. I suppose I must say yes, Rob?"
"I suppose you must, Mardy. Really, I can't feel about Prue's marrying as I did about Wythie's," said Rob. "Though I do feel very badly that it isn't dear old Bart."
"And I feel much more about it, in a certain way," returned her mother. "Wythie's marriage held no risk; it was the natural and lovely outcome of a charming romance, but Prue, foolish, ambitious, beautiful Prue is going into a different world from ours, and I am less sure of her fate."