“Mamma,” said Rosie, following her mother out to the veranda when prayers were over, “if you approve I will go up at once and dress for the day, getting Walter to do the same. It won’t take us long; then I’d like to drive over immediately to Woodburn and coax Brother Levis to let us all begin lessons at once, that we may get through and off to the Oaks sooner than we would otherwise.”

“Very well, my child, I will order the carriage; for I think it would be the better plan for you to drive over, as the roads are dusty,” was the indulgent reply.

“Yes,” said Walter, who had followed and was now close behind them, “I like that plan, for walking one would have to take either the very dusty road or the wet grass; and I’d like to get through lessons as early as possible, too. So I’m off to dress,” and away he ran, Rosie following. Just then the telephone bell rang, and Rosie hastening to the instrument found that Captain Raymond was calling from Woodburn to say that his pupils there had requested permission to begin school duties half an hour earlier than usual, that so they might be ready the sooner to drive over to the Oaks; that he had given consent, and would grant the same privilege to Rosie and Walter, if such was their desire, and they would come immediately.

“Thank you, sir. We will be there in a few minutes,” returned Rosie, then ran away to hurry through her preparations, while her mother took her place at the telephone to send a message to Violet, to the effect that she and their Cousin Mary might be expected at Woodburn about ten o’clock to make a short call, after which they would go on to the Oaks, taking her and her little ones with them if that arrangement suited her convenience.

“Thank you, mother dear,” came back in Violet’s own sweet tones, “I shall be glad to see both you and Cousin Mary, and you will find me and my babies ready to accept your kind invitation.”

Rosie and Walter made haste with their toilets, were presently in the carriage, and reached Woodburn just in season to take part in the opening school exercises.

All went prosperously that morning; the lessons had been thoroughly prepared, the recitations were so good that the captain felt entitled to bestow unstinted praise, and his pupils were dismissed from the school-room in gayest spirits.

“How very quiet the house seems!” exclaimed Lulu as they passed into the hall.

“Yes,” said her father; “Cousin Ronald, your mamma, and the little ones have gone on to the Oaks, and now we will follow them as soon as you are all ready. Our large family carriage is in waiting; it will hold us all nicely.”

They had only to put on their hats and gather up a few little things they wanted to take with them, and they drove away, a merry, laughing, jovial little party, so full of fun and frolic that time passed very quickly, and all were surprised when they found the carriage turning in at the great gates opening upon the beautiful grounds of the place that had been Elsie’s home in her girlhood’s days.

The chat and laughter suddenly ceased, and all eyes turned upon the lovely scenes through which they were passing. They were not entirely new to any of them, and only comparatively so to Marian, as she had already been there several times.

They were almost the last to arrive of all the large company of invited guests, and as they neared the mansion there could be seen, here and there on the lawn and in the shaded alleys, groups of grown people and of children, some sitting in the shade of the trees, others sauntering about or playing merry, romping games, while filling the air with their shouts and gleeful laughter.

A cordial welcome was given the captain and his pupils, who quickly made themselves at home in the grounds, scattering here and there among other guests, according to inclination or convenience.

The captain, having exchanged greetings with his host, hostess, and other friends and relatives, glanced about in search of his wife.

“You are looking for Vi, captain?” Grandma Elsie said inquiringly and with a smile. “She is engaged in piloting Cousin Mary about, showing her the places made memorable by having been the scenes of notable events in her mother’s life when this was her own and her father’s home. I believe they have gone down to what is still called Elsie’s arbor.”

“Ah?” he returned, “and my companionship would hardly be welcome just at present, I presume.”

“I cannot say, sir, but see no reason why it should not be,” she answered, and thanking her, he at once set off in the direction of the arbor, which was of course no unknown spot to him.

He found the ladies there, sitting together, gazing out upon the lovely landscape—the verdant valley, the clear waters of the swiftly flowing river, and the woods clad in the deep green of their summer robes. Violet was speaking in low, feeling tones, Mary listening evidently with intense interest. Violet had been telling of scenes and occurrences described in “Elsie’s girlhood”—the time when Arthur, in a fury of passion because she refused to advance him money without her father’s knowledge and consent, even went so far as to strike her, and was immediately soundly thrashed for it by Mr. Travilla; the time when Jackson, her discarded lover, discarded at first in obedience to her father’s command, afterward loathed by her when she had learned for herself that he was a villain of deepest dye instead of the honorable, virtuous man she had formerly esteemed him, came so unexpectedly upon her there, sitting alone and undefended, and with a loaded pistol threatened her life unless she would promise never to marry Mr. Travilla; but now Violet’s theme was her father’s confession of his love, and her mother’s glad surprise—the sweet story told to her by that mother herself since the dear father’s death.

“Mamma told it to me after I had heard the same sweet story from the lips of my own dear husband,” were the words that reached the captain’s ear as he stepped into the arbor, and as she turned at the sound their eyes met with a look of love as ardent and intense as any ever bestowed by either one upon the other: they were as truly lovers now as they had been five years before.

“Excuse me, ladies,” he said with a bow and smile, “I do not wish to intrude, and will go away at once if my company is not desired.”

“It is no intrusion, I am sure,” was the reply of Miss Keith, while Violet said with a look of pleasure: “We are only too glad to have you with us, my dear. You have come in the nick of time, for I have just finished my story, which, though new to cousin, would have been old to you.”

She made room for him by her side as she spoke. He took the offered seat, and they talked for a little of the lovely grounds and the beauty of the view from that point; then rose and walked back to the house, conversing as they went.

Violet led the way to the grassy lawn upon which opened the glass doors of what had been in former years her mother’s sitting-room, and through them into the room itself.

“This and the dressing and bed rooms beyond were mamma’s apartments while living here,” she said, “and loving his eldest sister as he does, Uncle Horace has kept them furnished all these years almost precisely as they were when she occupied them.”

“I should think he would,” said Mary Keith, sending keenly interested and admiring glances from side to side; “it is all so lovely that I should not want to change a single thing, even if I did not care to keep them just so in remembrance of her, as I certainly should.”

Mr. Horace Dinsmore, Jr., came in at that instant.

“Ah, Vi,” he said, “so you are showing your mother’s old rooms to Cousin Mary. That is right. I spent many a happy hour here with that dear sister when I was but a little fellow, for, as I presume you know, she is twelve years older than I.

“Ah, how well I remember the heartache it gave me when I was told of her approaching marriage, and that she would then leave our home for Mr. Travilla’s at Ion. I could scarce forgive him for robbing me of my sister. In fact I refused my consent, but to my surprise and chagrin found that it made no difference.”

He led the way into the dressing-room. “This,” he said, “is where I found her standing in her beautiful bridal robes, as the hour drew near when she was to be given to Travilla. Oh, how beautiful she was! I can see her yet—the lovely, blushing, smiling face, the shining hair adorned with orange-blossoms, and the slender, graceful figure half concealed by the folds of rich white satin and a cloud of mist-like lace. I remember exclaiming, ‘You look like an angel, only without the wings!’ and how I wanted to hug her, but had been forbidden lest I should spoil or disarrange some of her finery; and what a heartache I had at the thought that she was never to be the same to me again—so entirely our own—as she had been before. She called me to come and kiss her, and oh, what a strong effort it cost to refrain from giving the forbidden hug! but she promised me an opportunity to give it before she went; and the promise was remembered and kept.”

“Did you not hug papa instead, Uncle Horace?” queried Violet between a smile and a tear, for she was thinking of that dear parent as gone from among them never to return.

“Yes,” he said, “he kindly invited me to use him as a substitute for my sister, which I did heartily, for he was a great favorite with me, in spite of his robbing me of her.”

“In which room of the house was Cousin Elsie married?” asked Mary.

“Come and I will show you, pointing out the precise spot where she stood during the ceremony,” replied Mr. Dinsmore, leading the way, the others willingly following.

He redeemed his promise, gave a description of the adornment of the rooms on that memorable occasion, of the grounds also, and ended with the bride’s farewell to relatives and near and dear friends, especially her almost idolized father.

“Yes,” said Violet, “mamma has always loved grandpa so very, very dearly, and his love for her is, I believe, quite as great. Ah, uncle, let us take cousin to the hall and show her the niche from which mamma once fell when quite a little girl.”

“And I a baby boy,” he returned with a smile as he led the way; “but it was not from a niche she fell, Vi, but from a chair on the edge of which she stood, trying to reach up to hide a toy mouse behind the statue there. The chair slipped from under her; to save herself from falling she caught wildly at the legs of the statue, and she and it came down together with a crash upon the marble floor. There is the niche,” pointing it out, for they had reached the hall while he spoke; “the figure occupying it now is one purchased to replace that broken by its fall with sister at that time.”

“Did it fall on her? and was she badly hurt?” asked Miss Keith, shuddering slightly as she spoke.

“No,” replied Mr. Dinsmore, “not quite upon her, but so nearly that she had a very narrow escape from being crushed by it; she was stunned and bruised, but that was all, and she was able to join in the sports of the next day.”[A]

“Mary, that was in the winter which your aunts Mildred and Annis spent here,” remarked Violet. “I suppose you have heard something of that?”

“Yes, I think I have,” said Miss Keith. “Cousin Percy and you, Cousin Horace, were babes at that time, were you not? I think you said a moment since.”

“I have been told that we were,” Mr. Dinsmore replied with a smile. “Now I think I have shown you about all the places in the house that are interesting from being connected with events in my sister’s life. Most of our friends are at present on the verandas or the lawn; shall we go out and join them?”

A prompt assent was given and he led the way. All the invited guests seemed to have arrived; even Dr. Conly, who had been somewhat delayed by professional duties, was there surrounded by the young people, who were all fond of him as both relative and physician. Calhoun, the Dinsmore girls, Evelyn Leland, Marian McAlpine, Lulu Raymond, Harold and Herbert Travilla formed another group; but Calhoun, on seeing Mary Keith approaching, left the others, advanced to meet her, and after exchanging with her a pleasant “Good-morning,” invited her to a stroll through the grounds, adding, “I presume you have hardly seen every part of them yet?”

“No,” she replied, as they sauntered on together, and went on to tell to what parts Violet had taken her.

“Ah,” he said, “I am glad the pleasure of showing the rest was left for me. It is a fine old place, and being a near relative of the owners I have seen much of it.”

“Yes, and I have been told that Roselands also is a fine old place,” she returned; “and was not it Cousin Elsie’s home at one time?”

“Yes; for several years before her father bought this place and fitted it up for a home for himself and her.”

“I think it was there she was so very ill while still quite a little girl?”

“Yes; that was before my time, but when you visit us there, as I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you do next week, I will show you the room she occupied; no—I am forgetting that the house standing there then was afterward burned down; but it was rebuilt, that part of it being an exact reproduction of those rooms in the old house.”

“Burned down, did you say? How did that happen?”

“It was during the war,” he replied. “As I remember Roselands on my first sight of it, it was a most desolate place—only the ruins of a house there, the ground ploughed up by cannon, the grand old trees all cut down, the lawn changed to a muddy field, the gardens a desert, neither fences, hedgerows, nor shrubbery left, the fields overgrown with weeds—all the result of that dreadful civil war for which I now see there was no cause but the curse of slavery.

“But,” he continued, his voice taking on a more cheerful tone, “many years have passed since then; our dear Cousin Elsie furnished the necessary means for repairing damages so far as money could do it, the passing years have helped, and Roselands again deserves its name; in the eyes of its owners at least it is again a beautiful place, the fields are fertile and scarce anything is left that reminds us of its former desolation.”

“I am very glad indeed to hear that,” returned Mary, “and shall greatly enjoy seeing it in its renewed beauty. This place it would seem escaped better than Roselands?”

“Far better; indeed had, I believe, suffered only from some years of neglect. It was quite habitable; so uncle kindly gave us all shelter here for a time—that is, until Roselands was ready to receive us.”

“That was very kind,” responded Mary.

“It was indeed,” said Calhoun. “I cannot tell you how strongly I am attached to uncle, Aunt Rose, Cousin Elsie, and indeed the whole family.”

Just then a turn in the walk brought them face to face with another small party of young people—the Dinsmore girls, Rosie Travilla, Croly, Harold, and Herbert.

“So here you are!” exclaimed Harold. “We were looking for you and want to take you back near the house. We are to have a small lunch of cake and lemonade handed about to us on the lawn, Aunt Sue says; after that some games to make the time pass pleasantly until the dinner-hour.”

“With such inducements held out would it not be well to go with them, Miss Keith?” queried Calhoun.

“Perhaps so,” she returned laughingly; “since I heard the lemonade mentioned I have discovered that I am somewhat thirsty.”

“And I own that the announcement has had the same effect upon me,” he said.

“Then come,” said Herbert, leading the way by turning into another shaded alley; “we will reach our destination sooner by this path.”

The day passed most pleasantly to all, the greater part of it spent in sports in the open air; a grand dinner, served in the large dining-room of the mansion, taking up an hour or more; then a time of rest and quiet talk underneath the trees or on the verandas; after that more games, followed by a light tea handed the guests where they were, and soon after a pleasant ride or drive homeward.

[A] See “Mildred’s Married Life.”