“Cousin Elsie, how very kind in you!” exclaimed Mary, both tone and look full of delight. “But,” she added with a doubtful glance at her mother, “I fear I could hardly be spared from home.”
“Now don’t be so conceited, Mary Keith,” laughed that lady, with a mischievous glance into the flushed, eager face of her eldest daughter. “I think I am quite capable of keeping house and attending to all family affairs without a particle of aid from you. So if Cousin Elsie wants you and you want to go, I advise you to set to work at once at your preparations—putting your wardrobe in perfect order and adding to it whatever may be needed. Oh, you needn’t look doubtful and troubled! Your father has been greatly prospered of late, and I know will not feel any necessity or inclination to deny anything desirable to the good daughter who has been a very great help and comfort to him and me through years of toil and struggle.”
Mary was affected even to tears. “O mother, how good and kind in you to say all that!” she faltered. “I have done no more than my duty—hardly even so much, I fear.”
“Possibly your father and I may be as capable of judging of that as yourself,” returned Mrs. Keith in the same tone of careless gayety she had used before; “and we think—for we were talking the matter over only the other day—that our eldest daughter deserves and needs some weeks of recreation this summer. We were discussing the comparative merits of sea and mountain air, but finally decided to leave the selection to yourself; and now doubtless Cousin Elsie’s kind invitation will decide you in favor of a trip to the South, even in spite of its climate being less suitable for the warm weather than our own.”
“It will be a change for her, at all events,” Elsie said, “and when we come North again, as we expect to do in a few weeks, we may, I think, hope to return her to you rested and invigorated. Or, still better, we will hope to take her, with your consent, with us to the sea-shore for a good rest there before returning her to you.”
Mrs. Keith and Mary returned warm thanks for this second invitation, but it was not at that time definitely settled whether or not it could or would be finally accepted.
“Ah, mother dear, I see now why you insisted this spring on my buying and having made up more and handsomer dresses than ever I had in one season before,” Mary said presently with an affectionate look and smile into Mrs. Keith’s pleasant and still comely face.
“Yes, it is always wise to be ready for sudden emergencies,” returned the mother playfully, “and I think you can easily be ready for a visit to Ion by the time Cousin Elsie will be on her way home from Princeton.”
“Our plan is to start for home in about a week,” Elsie said, “as the commencement will be over by that time, and my boys, Harold and Herbert, ready to accompany us.”
“You are making us a very short visit, Cousin Elsie,” remarked Mrs. Keith. “I hope when you come up North again you will piece it out with a much longer one.”