"Tabitha!"
How welcome that voice from across the road sounded just then when she wanted to get away and be alone for a time with her thoughts, and with a hasty hug of the rosy-cheeked girl still on the floor by the bed, she rushed out of the house to answer her aunt's call.
In the cool of the evening Tom found her sitting among the rocks high up on the mountainside, gazing with somber eyes into the golden west, for the ocean lay in that direction, and it was close to the seashore that Carrie was going away to school.
"What's the matter, Puss?" he asked gently, reading tragedy in her mournful attitude, and secretly wondering who would champion the little sister's cause when he had gone away to college.
"Nothing much, Tom," she answered, and then amended her statement; "that is, nothing that can be helped."
He sat down on the rock beside her and waited for her confession, but she was silent, and for a long time they sat staring off across the flat to the mountains beyond, where the afterglow of the brilliant sunset still hung and radiated from each peak. Then he spoke, "Puss, in two weeks I leave for the University. Did you know it?"
She nodded her head.
"Mr. Carson has just come home from Reno and he brought me all sorts of booklets and views of the place and particularly of the college buildings. Do you want to see them?"
"Yes!" She was all eagerness, for Tom's joys were hers, and his achievements the pride of her heart. So he laid a bundle of papers and pictures in her lap and drew nearer that he might make explanations and answer the questions she was sure to ask.
"There is a High School there, too, Puss, and if I have success in earning more than enough money to put me through college, I will send for you and you will keep house for me and go to High School there. Then when you graduate from that department, you will be ready to go to college, and I will be earning a salary, or maybe have an office all my own, so I can help you through the University."