She ran upstairs, but, in a moment, her father heard her tripping down again. Her head parted the portières. "I just came back to tell you, that this kind of a talk we 've had is just as good as the Mount Hunger bedtime-talks. I shan't be homesick any more." And away she ran.
Now John Curtis Clyde was a pew-owner--as had been his father and grandfather before him--in one of the Fifth Avenue churches, and duly made his appearance in that pew every Sunday morning. He entered, too, into the service with hearty voice, and made his responses without, the while, giving undue thought to the world. But when he had said "Our Father" with his little daughter by his side, he had supposed his duty performed to the extent of his needs--of another's, his child's, he gave no thought.
To-night, however, as he sat in the easy-chair where Hazel had left him, it began to dawn upon him slowly that his little daughter, during her fourteen years, might have had other needs, for which he had not provided, nor, perhaps, with all his riches was capable of providing.
The clock chimed twelve,--one,--two--; John Clyde, with a sigh, rose and went up to bed--a wiser and a better man.
XXII
ROSE
What a summer that was! Mr. Clyde sent Hazel up to the Blossoms for July and again for September, when he, the Colonel and Mrs. Fenlick, the Pearsells and the Masons, Aunt Carrie and Uncle Jo took possession of the entire inn at Barton's River, and for a month coached and rode throughout the "North Country," all in the cool September weather. Jack Sherrill joined them for the last three weeks, and, this time, Maude Seaton was not of the party.
"I just headed her off every time she made a dead set at any one of us for an invitation," said Mrs. Fenlick one day in confidence to her intimate, Mrs. Pearsell, as they sat on the vine-covered veranda of the inn, "but she proved a regular octopus. She got the Colonel in her toils one morning at the Casino, and I pretended to be faint--yes, I did--just to get his attention for a sufficient time to make a fuss, and get him alone in the carriage; then, of course, I settled it. Oh, dear! men are so guileless in spots!"--Mrs. Fenlick gave a weary sigh--"What I have n't been through with that girl! Anyway, she's been out two winters, now, and she has n't caught Jack Sherrill yet. I don't think there is much chance after the first season for a girl to make a really fine match, do you?" Then they fell to discussing the pros, and cons, of the question with evergreen interest.
Jack Sherrill, for one, had no thought of Miss Seaton. He had sent the valentine-flowers, and the sentiment from Barry Cornwall's love-song, with a strange kind of "kill or cure" feeling.
He had communed with himself, at twilight of one February day, as he lay at full length on the cushioned window-seat of his room from which he looked down upon the darkening, snow-covered campus and the anatomy of the elms showing black against it. His pipe had gone out, but he derived some satisfaction in pulling away at it mechanically, while he thought out the situation for himself.