“Oh, Cousin Lizzie, I am so sorry! I did not mean to tease. I am not teasing. Father is ill, you must have noticed how knocked up he has been looking lately, and the doctor has taken him with Mother to New York. They have just gone, and they are to sail on a slow steamer to Bermuda and Panama in the morning. Please let us help you if we can.”
“You help! A lot of silly girls! It is about my nephew Lewis!” and the poor lady wept anew.
CHAPTER V.
LEWIS SOMERVILLE.
“Lewis! What on earth can be the matter with him?” chorused the girls.
“Matter enough! He has been shipped!”
“Shipped? Oh, Cousin Lizzie, you can’t mean it!” exclaimed Douglas, drying her eyes as she began to realize that she was not the only miserable person in the world whose ambitions had gone awry.
“I am sure if he has been fired, it is from no fault of his own,” declared Nan, who was a loyal soul and always insisted that her friends and relatives were in the right until absolute proof to the contrary was established.
“Well, whether it was his fault or not, I am not prepared to say. ‘Where there is so much smoke there must be some fire.’”