"Yes!" said Mrs. Busby, with the same deeply considerative air. "I am thinking what will be the best way to manage. We have a plan of going to Chicago—Mr. Busby's family is mostly there, and he wants us to visit them; we should be gone all June and part of July, for I know Mr. Busby wants to go further, if once he gets so far; and we may not be back till the end of July. I don't know what to do with Rotha."
Not a word of this plan had Antoinette ever heard before, but she kept wise silence; only her small blue eyes sparkled knowingly at the fire. Rotha was silent too at first, with vexation.
"I am very sorry—" she repeated.
"Yes," said Mrs. Busby. "I thought I could leave you in safe quarters with Mrs. Mowbray for a week or two after school broke up; now that possibility is out of the question. Well, we will sleep upon it. Never mind, Rotha; don't trouble yourself. I shall find some way out of the difficulty. I always do."
These words were spoken with so much kindness of tone that they quite comforted Rotha as to the immediate annoyance of being in the way. She went up to her little third-story room, threw open the blinds, to let the stars look in, and remembered that neither she nor yet her aunt Busby was the guide of her fortunes. Yet, yet,—what a hard change this was! All the pursuits in which she had taken such delight, suddenly stopped; her peaceful home lost; her best friend separated from her. It was difficult to realize the fact that God knew and had allowed it. Yet no harm, no real harm, comes to his children, unless they bring it upon themselves; so this change could not mean harm. How could it mean good? Sense saw not, reason could not divine; but faith said "yes"; and in the quietness of that confidence Rotha went to sleep.
At breakfast the ladies' faces had regained their wonted brightness.
"I have settled it all!" Mrs. Busby announced, when her husband had left the breakfast table and the room. Rotha looked up and waited; Antoinette did not look up; therefore it may be presumed she knew what was coming.
"I am going to send Rotha to the country while we are gone."
"Where in the country?" asked the person most concerned.
"To my place in the country—my place at Tanfield. I have a place in the country."—Mrs. Busby spoke with a very alert and pleased air.