"Oh, Aunt Virginia!" laughed Charlotte.
"I am sure I have read of such things," the lady insisted stoutly.
Not long after this Charlotte received a letter from Cousin Francis.
"Father tells me you have been having your own troubles, little Char," he wrote. "Well, keep up a good heart and work hard. This is what I am doing just now. Things have not gone my way at all, but in spite of it I am going to try to do something worth while this winter. I often wish you were here to be my admiring critic."
A letter came from Mrs. Wellington also, relating chiefly to a package Aunt Cora had commissioned her to send, but at the end she said: "Perhaps you will be interested to know the Carpenter house is closed. Miss May has gone away—not to be home for a year, they say—so if you were here, you could not watch for her as you used to do."
Was it on account of Miss Carpenter that things were not going Cousin Frank's way? Charlotte wondered, and began to think once more of the rose that was out of reach.
CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH
AN EVENING CALL
"Alex, I am glad to see you. I was about to send Martha over for you; I am alone this evening. How very nice you look!"