The city was reached in safety, and some hours later they returned, as Zoe said, "Laden with lovely things for their own adornment."
The babies were on the veranda waiting, watching eagerly for papa and mamma, who, their nurse kept telling them, would soon be seen coming up the avenue. When they did appear, alighting from the Fairview carriage, they were recognized with a glad cry, and Zoe, forgetting her weariness, ran to the little ones, embraced first one and then the other, put a toy in the hand of each, spent another minute or two caressing them, then hurried to her own apartments to dress for tea and the family gathering expected in the evening.
Elsie and her husband had driven home, but would return for the informal assembly of the members of the connection.
The guests came early, Ella Conley and her brothers from Roselands being the first. Ella was in high glee. She had long felt an ardent desire to visit Viamede, and now hailed with delight the opportunity to do so. The circumstances of both brothers had greatly improved; they were disposed to be very generous to the only sister remaining at home with them, and had told her she must have a new, handsome dress for the wedding, and everything else she needed to fit her out well for the journey and a sojourn of some weeks at Viamede.
Zoe felt flattered by being consulted in regard to necessary or desirable purchases, and greatly enjoyed exhibiting her own, and describing Elsie's, of that day.
Then the other families, or delegates from them, arrived in rapid succession, and a merry sociable interview ensued. All were quite resolved, should nothing interfere, to accept the invitation to Viamede, but some of them could not yet decide upon the exact time when they would be prepared to leave their homes for that distant point, and for an absence of several weeks. But the Ion, Oaks, Fairview, and Roselands people would all go in two weeks in company.
It was still early, when wheels were heard approaching from the direction of the village, a hack turned in at the gate, drove rapidly up the avenue, halted at the veranda steps, and an old gentleman alighted.
"Cousin Ronald!" exclaimed Elsie Leland, Edward, and Zoe in a breath, and they and the others gathered about him with words of cordial greeting and welcome.
"You have given us a most pleasant surprise, Cousin Ronald," Edward said when the old gentleman was comfortably seated in an easy chair. "You have not been to tea?"
"Yes, laddie, I took that in the village yonder where I alighted frae the cars. But the auld folks seem to be missing here," glancing about in search of them as he spoke. "I dinna see your honored grandsire, his wife, or my sweet Cousin Elsie, your mither. The bairns Rosie and Walter, too, are not here; what's become o' them a', laddie? They're no ill, I hope?"