countryside!

“‘And to see it reflected in eyes that I love.’”

Darsie paraphrased a line of the sweet old ballad, singing it in a clear, bell-like voice to a pantomime of clasped hands and rolling eyes. “It would be bad enough in an ordinary year, but to rend us apart from the Vernons—oh, no, it’s unthinkable!”

“You have the Vernons near you all the year, dear. Aunt Maria only asks for eight weeks. There are occasions in life when it does not do to think only of our own pleasure.”

Silence. A note in the mother’s voice had startled her hearers into the conviction that the invitation must be regarded seriously, and not tossed aside as a joke. A lacerating suspicion that the authorities were in favour of an acceptance pierced like a dart.

“Mother! What do you mean? You couldn’t possibly be so cruel—”

“Mother, you don’t mean—.”

“Mother, what do you mean?”

“I mean that you ought to go, dears, which ever one of you is asked. Aunt Maria is an old lady, and she is lonely. Her doctor has ordered cheerful companionship. Moreover, she has been a kind friend to father in the past, and has a right to expect some consideration in return. If you went in the right spirit, you could be of real use and comfort, and would have the satisfaction of doing a kind deed.”

Darsie set her lips in a straight line, and tilted her chin in the air.

“Couldn’t pretend to go in the right spirit! I’d be in a tearing rage. Somebody else can have the ‘satisfaction,’ and I’ll go to the sea.”

“Darsie, dear, that’s naughty!”

“I feel naughty, mother. ‘Naughty’ is a mild word. Savage! I feel savage. It’s too appalling. What does father say? I’m sure he would never—”

“Father feels as I do; very disappointed for our own sakes and for yours that our happy party should be disturbed, but he never shirks a disagreeable duty himself, and he expects his children to follow his example.”

Lavender instantly burst into tears.

“It’s always the way—always the way! It was too good to be true. We might have known that it was. She’ll choose me, and Hannah will go without me. We’d planned every 

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