"No, Wal. I'm longing to get away, and papa has engaged our passage in the next steamer. But perhaps we may return in time to see you graduate next year."
"What, in such haste to leave America! I'm afraid you're losing your patriotism," he said playfully.
"Ah, it is no want of love for my dear native land that makes me impatient to be gone!" she answered half sadly.
"And are you really to be gone a year?"
"So papa intends, but of course everything in this world is uncertain."
"I shall look anxiously for my European letters, and expect them to be very interesting."
"I'll do my best, Wal," she said languidly, "but I don't feel, just now, as if I could ever write anything worth reading."
"I think I never saw you so blue," he said in a lively, jesting tone. "I must tell you of the fun we fellows have, and if it doesn't make you wish yourself one of us—Well," and he launched out into an animated description of various practical jokes played off by the students upon their professors or on each other.
He succeeded at length in coaxing some of the old brightness into the sweet face, and Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore, mounting the stairs on their return from their walk, exchanged glances of delighted surprise at the sound of a silvery laugh which had not greeted their ears for days.
Walter received a hearty welcome from both. His visit, though necessarily short, was of real service to Elsie, doing much to rouse her out of herself and her grief; thus beginning the cure which time and change of scene—dulling the keen edge of sorrow and disappointment, and giving pleasant occupation to her thoughts—would at length carry on to completion.