UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.
AVE you seen Imogen Young to-day?" was Clover's first question on getting home.
"No. Lionel was in for a moment at noon, and said she was preserving raspberries; so, as I had a good deal to do, I did not go up. Why?"
"Oh, nothing in particular. I only wanted to know. Well, here we are, left to ourselves with not a Rose to our name. How we shall miss them! There's a letter from Johnnie for you by way of consolation."
But the letter did not prove in the least consoling, for it was to break to them a piece of disappointing news.
"The Daytons have given up their Western trip," wrote Johnnie. "Mrs. Dayton's father is very ill at Elberon; she has gone to him, and there is almost no chance of their getting away at all this summer. It really is a dreadful disappointment, for we had set our hearts on our visit, and papa had made all his arrangements to be absent for six weeks,—which you know is a thing not easily done, or undone. Then Debby and Richard had been promised a holiday, and Dorry was going in a yacht with some friends to the Thousand Islands. It all seemed so nicely settled, and here comes this blow to unsettle it. Well, Dieu dispose,—there is nothing for it but resignation, and unpacking our hopes and ideas and putting them back again in their usual shelves and corners. We must make what we can of the situation, and of course, it isn't anything so very hard to have to pass the summer in Burnet with papa; still I was that wild with disappointment at the first, that I actually went the length of suggesting that we should go all the same, and pay our own travelling expenses! You can judge from this how desperate my state of mind must have been! Papa, as you may naturally suppose, promptly vetoed the proposal as impossible, and no doubt he was right. I am growing gradually resigned to Fate now, but all the same I cannot yet think of the blessed Valley and all of you, and—and the happy time we are not going to have, without feeling quite like 'weeping a little weep.' How I wish that we possessed a superfluous income!"
"Now," said Elsie, and her voice too sounded as if a "little weep" were not far off, "isn't that too bad? No papa this year, and no Johnnie. I suppose we are spoiled, but the fact is, I have grown to count on the Daytons and their car as confidently as though they were the early and the latter rain." Her arch little face looked quite long and disconsolate.
"So have I," said Clover. "It doesn't bear talking about, does it?"
She had been conscious of late of a great longing after her father. She had counted confidently on his visit, and the sense of disappointment was bitter. She put away her bonnet and folded her gloves with a very sober face. A sort of disenchantment seemed to have fallen on the Valley since the coming of this bad news and the departure of Rose.