CHAPTER XXXI.
"Here's news, girls; we are going back to Maine!" and Georgie rushed into the sitting-room where his sisters and their girl friends were chatting together. "Papa says we are going back for sure, in just a few weeks, too! Isn't that jolly?" and he manifested his delight in a series of handsprings that would have charmed the heart of an acrobat.
"Yes, I heard something of it, but hoped it would not come to pass," said Dexie.
"It is the best news I've heard for a long time, the sooner we leave this horrid place the better I'll be pleased," was Gussie's comment.
Elsie was quite depressed at the thought of parting from her friends; but the intervening weeks were full of pleasure and excitement, and drives and parties seemed to follow one another in quick succession.
One day Dexie came in from a shopping expedition in great excitement, saying:
"Oh, girls, I have met my double; met her down in a store on Granville Street, and I actually followed her until she entered a house on Spring Garden Road. If she had worn one of my suits, I should have expected her to walk home instead of me. I began to think 'this could not be I.' Whom do you think she can be?"
Nobody knew; but a few days after, Lancy related the fact that he had hurried after a lady, supposing her to be Dexie, and found he had been following a stranger.
"I am going to find out who this young person is," said Dexie, laughing. "Who knows, perhaps it is my only chance to 'see myself as others see me.'"
After a few inquiries, it was found that Dexie's double was a Nina Gordon, only daughter of a widow lately arrived in Halifax, and residing with a bachelor brother who was travelling for a city firm.