Now and then the accustomed world turns a somersault; one day it faces you with familiar features, the next it wears a quite unrecognizable countenance. The experience is, of course, nothing new, though it is to be doubted whether it was ever staged so dramatically and on so vast a scale as during the past four years. And no one to whom it happens is ever the same afterward.

Elliott Cameron was not a refugee. She did not trudge Flemish roads with the pitiful salvage of her fortunes on her back, nor was she turned out of a cottage 2 in Poland with only a sackful of her household treasures. Nevertheless, American girl though she was, she had to be evacuated from her house of life, the house she had been building through sixteen petted, autocratic years. This is the story of that evacuation.

It was made, for all the world, like any Pole’s or Serbian’s or Belgian’s; material valuables she let pass with glorious carelessness, as they left the silver spoons in order to salvage some sentimental trifle like a baby-shoe or old love-letters. Elliott took the closing of her home as she had taken the disposal of the big car, cheerfully enough, but she could not leave behind some absurd little tricks of thought that she had always indulged in. She was as strange to the road as any Picardy peasant and as bewildered, with—shall I say it?—considerably less pluck and spirit than some of them, when the landmarks she had lived by were swept away. But they, you 3 see, had a dim notion of what was happening to them. Elliott had none. She didn’t even know that she was being evacuated. She knew only that ways which had always worked before had mysteriously ceased working, that prejudices and preoccupations and habits of mind and action, which she had spent her life in accumulating, she must now say good-by to, and that the war, instead of being across the sea, a thing one’s friends and cousins sailed away to, had unaccountably got right into America itself and was interfering to an unreasonable extent in affairs that were none of its business.

Father came home one night from a week’s absence and said, as he unfolded his napkin, “Well, chicken, I’m going to France.”

They were alone at dinner. Miss Reynolds, the housekeeper, was dining out with friends, as she sometimes did; nights that, though they both liked Miss Reynolds, 4 father and daughter checked with a red mark.

“To France?” A little thrill pricked the girl’s spine as she questioned. “Is it Red Cross?”

“Not this time. An investigation for the government. It may, probably will, take months. The government wants a thorough job done. Uncle Samuel thinks your ancient parent competent to hold up one end of the thing.”

“Stop!” Elliott’s soft order commandeered all her dimples.

“I won’t have you maligning my father, you naughty man! Ancient parent, indeed! That’s splendid, isn’t it?”

“I rather like it. I was hoping it would strike you the same way.”

“When do you go?”

“As soon as I can get my affairs in shape—I could leave to-morrow, if I had to. Probably I shall be off in a week or ten days.”

“I suppose the government didn’t say anything about my investigating something, too?”

“Now you mention it, I do not recollect that the subject came up.”

She shook her head reprovingly, “That was an omission! However, I think I’ll go as your secretary.”

Mr. Cameron smiled across the table. How pretty she was, how daintily arch in her sweetness! “That arrangement would be entirely satisfactory to me, my dear, but I am not taking a secretary. I shall get one over there, when I need one.”

“But what can I go as?” pursued the girl. “I’d like to go as something.”

Heavens! she looked as though she meant it! “I’m afraid you can’t go, Lot, this time.”

She lifted cajoling eyes. “But I want to. Oh, I know! I can go to school in Paris.”

Her little air of having settled the matter 6 left him smiling but serious. “France has mouths enough to feed without one extra school-girl’s, chicken.”

“I don’t eat much. Are you afraid of submarines?”

“For you, yes.”

“I’m not. Daddies dear, mayn’t I go? I’d love to be near you.”

“Positively, my love, you may not.”

She drew down the corners of her mouth and went through a bewitching imitation of wiping tears out of her eyes. But she wasn’t really disappointed. She had been fairly certain in advance of what the verdict would be. There had been a bare chance, of something different—that was all, and it didn’t pay to let chances, even the barest, go by default. So she crumbled her warbread and remarked thoughtfully, “I suppose I can stay at home, but it won’t be very exciting.”

Her father seemed to find his next words hard to say. “I had a notion we might 7 close the house. It is rather expensive to keep up; not much point in doing so just for one, is there? In going to France I shall give my services.”

“Of course. But the house—” The delicate brows lifted. “What were you thinking of doing with me?”

“Dumping you on the corner. What else?” The two laughed together as at a good joke. But there was a tightening in the man’s throat. He wondered how soon, after next week, he would again be sitting at table opposite that vivacious young face.

“Seriously, Lot, I met Bob in Washington. He was there on conservation business. When he heard what I was contemplating, he asked you up to Highboro. Said Jessica and he would be delighted to have you visit them for a year. They’re generous souls. It struck me as a good plan. Your uncle is a fine man, and I have always admired his wife. I’ve never seen 8 as much of her as I’d have liked. What do you say to the idea?”

“Um-m-m.” Elliott did not commit herself. “Uncle Bob and Aunt Jessica are very nice, but I don’t know them.”

“House full of boys and girls. You won’t be lonely.”

The piquant nose wrinkled mischievously. “That would never do. I like my own way too well.”

He laughed. “And you generally manage to get it by hook or by crook!”

“I? You malign me. You give it to me because you like me.”

How adorably pretty she looked!

He laughed again. “You’ve got your old dad there, all right. Yes, yes, you’ve got him there!”

“Didn’t I tell you just now that you mustn’t call my father old?”

“So you did! So you did! Well, well, the truth will out now and then, you know. Could you inveigle Jane into giving us 9 more butter?—By the way, here’s a letter from Jessica. I found it in the stack on my desk to-night. Better read it before you say no.”

“Oh, I will,” Elliott received the letter without enthusiasm. “Very good of her, I’m sure. I’ll write and thank her to-morrow; but I think I’ll go to Aunt Nell’s.”

“Just as you say. You know Elinor better. But I rather incline to Bob and Jess. There is something to be said for variety, Lot.”

“Yes, but a year is so long. Why, Father Cameron, a year is three hundred and sixty-five whole days long and I don’t know how many hours and minutes and—and seconds. The seconds are awful! Daddles darling, I never could support life away from you in a perfectly strange family for all those interminable seconds!”

“Your own cousins, chicken; and they 10 wouldn’t seem strange long. I’ve a notion they’d help make time hustle. Better read the letter. It’s a good letter.”

“I will—when I don’t have you to talk to. What’s the matter?”

“Bless me, I forgot to tell Miss Reynolds! Nell’s coming to-night. Wired half an hour ago.”

“Aunt Nell? Oh, jolly!” The slender hands clapped in joyful pantomime. “But don’t worry about Miss Reynolds. I will tell Anna to make a room ready. Now we can settle things talking. It’s so much more satisfactory than writing.”

The man laughed. “Can’t say no, so easily, eh, chicken?”

She joined in his laugh. “There is something in that, of course, but it isn’t very polite of you to insinuate that any one would wish to say no to me.”

“I stand corrected of an error in tact. No, I can’t quite see Elinor turning you down.”

That was the joy of these two; they were such boon companions, like brother and sister together instead of father and daughter.

But now Elliott, too, remembered something. “Oh, Father! Quincy has scarlet fever!”

“Scarlet fever? When did he come down?”

“Just to-day. They suspected it yesterday, and Stannard came over to Phil Tracy’s. To-day the doctor made sure. So Maude and Grace are going right on from the wedding to that Western ranch where they were invited. All their outfits are in the house here, but they will get new ones in New York.”

“Where’s James?”

“Uncle James went to the hotel, and Aunt Margaret, of course, is quarantined. Quincy isn’t very sick. They’ve postponed all their house-parties for two months.”

“H’m. Where do they think the boy caught it?”

“Not an idea. He came home from school Thursday.”

“Well, Cedarville will be minus Camerons for a while, won’t it?”

“It certainly will. Both houses closed—or Uncle James’s virtually so. Do you know what Aunt Nell is coming for?”

“Not the ghost of a notion. Perhaps she is going to adopt a dozen young Belgians and wants me to draw up the papers.”

“Mercy! I hope not a whole dozen, if I am to stay at Clover Hill with her. Half a dozen would be enough.”

“Want you at Clover Hill?” said Aunt Elinor, when the first greetings were over and she had heard the news. “Why, you dear child, of course I do! Or rather I should, if I were to be there myself. But I’m going to France, too.”

“To France!”

“Red Cross,” with an enthusiastic nod of the perfectly dressed head. “Lou Emery and I are going over. That’s what I stopped off to tell you people. Ran down to New York to see about my papers. It’s all settled. We sail next week. Now I’m hurrying back to shut up Clover Hill. Then for something worth while! Do you know,” the fine eyes turned from contemplation of a great mass of pink roses on the table, “I feel as though I were on the point of beginning to live at last. All my days I have spent dashing about madly in search of a good time. Now—well, now I shall go where I’m sent, live for weeks, maybe, without a bath, sleep in my clothes in any old place, when I sleep at all; but I’m crazy, simply crazy to get over there and begin.”

It was then that Elliott began dimly to sense a predicament. Even then she didn’t recognize it for an impasse. Such things didn’t happen to Elliott Cameron. 14 But she did wish that Quincy had selected another time for isolating her Uncle James’s house. Not that she particularly desired to spend a year, or a fraction of a year, with the James Camerons, but they were preferable to her Uncle Robert’s family, on the principle that ills you know and understand make a safer venture than a jump in the dark. Nothing radical was wrong with the Robert Camerons except that they were dark horses. They lived farther away than the other Camerons, which wouldn’t have mattered—geography seldom bothered a Cameron—if they hadn’t chosen to let it. On second thoughts, perhaps that, however, was exactly what did matter. Elliott understood that the Robert Camerons were poor. More than once she had heard her father say he feared “Bob was hard up.” But Bob was as proud as he was hard up; Elliott knew that Father had never succeeded in lending him any money.

She let these things pass through her mind as she reviewed the situation. Proud and independent and poor—those were worthy qualities, but they did not make any family interesting. They were more apt, Elliott thought, to make it uninteresting. No, the Robert Camerons were out of the question, kindly though they might be. If she must spend a year outside her own home, away from her father-comrade, she preferred to spend it with her own sort.

There is this to be said for Elliott Cameron; she had no mother, had had no mother since she could remember. The mother Elliott could not remember had been a very lovely person, and as broad-minded as she was charming. Elliott had her mother’s charm, a personal magnetism that twined people around her little finger, but she was essentially narrow-minded. With Elliott it was a matter of upbringing, of coming-up rather, since within somewhat wide limits her upbringing had, after 16 all, been largely in her own hands. Henry Cameron had had neither the heart nor the will to thwart his only child.

Before she went to bed, Elliott, curled up on her window-seat, read Aunt Jessica’s letter. It was a good letter, a delightful letter, and more than that. If she had been older, she might, just from reading it, have seen why her father wanted her to go to Highboro. As it was, something tugged at her heartstrings for a moment, but only for a moment. Then she swung her foot over the edge of the window-seat and disposed of the situation, as she had always disposed of situations, to her liking. She had no notion that the Fates this time were against her.

The next day her cousin Stannard Cameron came over. Stannard was a long, lazy youth, with a notion that what he did or didn’t do was a matter of some importance to the universe. All the Camerons were inclined to that supposition, all but 17 the Robert Camerons; and we don’t know about them yet.

“So they’re going to ship me up into the wilds of Vermont to Uncle Bob’s,” he ended his tale of woe. “They’ll be long on the soil, and all that rot. Have a farm, haven’t they?”

“I was invited up there, too,” said Elliott.

“You!” An instant change became visible in the melancholy countenance. “Going?”

“No, I think not.”

“Oh, come on! Be a sport. We’d have fun together.”

“I’ll be a sport, but not that kind.”

“Guess again, Elliott. You and I could paint the place red, whatever kind of a shack it is they’ve got.”

“Stannard,” said the girl, “you’re terribly young. If you think I’d go anywhere with you and put up any kind of a game on our cousins—cousins, Stan—”

“There are cousins and cousins.”

She shook her head. “No wilds in mine. When do you start?”

“To-morrow, worse luck! What are you going to do?”

She smiled tantalizingly. “I have made plans.” True, she had made plans. The fact that the second party to the transaction was not yet aware of their existence did not alter the fact that she had made them. Then she devoted herself to the despondent Stannard, and sent him away cheered almost to the point of thinking, when he left the house, that Vermont was not quite off the map.

Not so Elizabeth Royce. Bess knew precisely what was on the map, and had Vermont been there, she would have noticed it. There was not much, Miss Royce secretly flattered herself, that escaped her. She had heard of Mr. Robert Cameron; but whether he resided in Kamchatka or Timbuctoo she could not have told you. 19 Mr. Robert Cameron, she had adduced with an acumen beyond her years, was the unsuccessful member of a highly successful family. And now Elliott, adorable Elliott, was to be marooned in this uncharted district for a whole year. It was unthinkable!

“But, Elliott darling, you’d die in Vermont!”

“Oh, no!” said Elliott; “I don’t think I should find it pleasant, but I shouldn’t die.”

“Pleasant!” sniffed Miss Royce. “I should say not.”

“It is rather far away from everybody. Think of not seeing you for a year, Bess!”

“I don’t want to think of it. What’s the matter with your Uncle James’s house when the quarantine’s lifted?”

“Nothing. But it has only just been put on.”

“And the tournament next week. You can’t miss that! Oh, Elliott!”

“I think,” remarked Elliott pensively, “there ought to be a home opened for girls whose fathers are in France.”

“Why,” asked Bess, gripped by a great idea, “why shouldn’t you come to us while your uncle’s house is quarantined?”

Why not, indeed? Elliott thought Bess a little slow in arriving at so obvious and satisfactory a solution of the whole difficulty, but she was properly reluctant about accepting in haste. “Wouldn’t that be too much trouble? Of course, it would be perfectly lovely for me, but what would your mother say?”

“Mother will love to have you!” Miss Royce spoke with conviction.

They spent the rest of the afternoon making plans and Elizabeth went home walking on air.

But Mother, alas! proved a stumbling-block. “That would be very nice,” she said, “very nice indeed; but Elliott Cameron has plenty of relatives. They will 21 make some arrangement among them. I should hardly feel at liberty to interfere with their plans.”

“But her Aunt Elinor is going to France, and you know the James Camerons’ house is in quarantine. That leaves only the Vermont Camerons—”

“Oh, yes. I remember, now, there was a third brother. They have their plans, probably.”

And that was absolutely all Bess could get her mother to say.

“But, Mother,” she almost sobbed at last, “I—I asked her!”

“Then I am afraid you will have to un-ask her,” said Mrs. Royce. “We really can’t get another person into the house this summer, with your Aunt Grace and her family coming in July.”

Then it was that Elliott discovered the impasse. Try as she would, she could find no way out, and she lost a good deal of sleep in the attempt. To have to do something 22 that she didn’t wish to do was intolerable. You may think this very silly; if you do, it shows that you have not always had your own way. Elliott had never had anything but her own way. That it had been in the main a sweet and likable way did not change the fact. And how Stannard would gloat over her! He had had to do the thing himself, but secretly she had looked down on him for it, just as she had always despised girls who lamented their obligation to go to places where they did not wish to go. There was always, she had held, a way out, if you used your brains. Altogether, it was a disconcerted, bewildered, and thoroughly put-out young lady who, a week later, found herself taking the train for Highboro. The world—her familiar, complacent, agreeable world—had lost its equilibrium.