"I had a message," said Mrs. Clutterbuck quietly, "about Miss Grace. I am to have another when I get back just now. Will you come with me? It’s about Miss Annie. She has been very ill."
It was impossible for her to tell them that the same illness as Elma’s had done its work there. They seemed to have no suspicion of that.
"Oh, poor Miss Annie!" said Mabel. "If I had only known!"
"That was just it; they couldn’t tell you that too with all you had to hear about Elma. Elma is very well now, you understand, but Miss Annie--well, Miss Annie is not expected to live over to-night."
The news came to them in an unreal way. It was the break-up of their childhood. That Miss Annie should not always be there, the charming beautiful invalid, seemed impossible.
"Oh, but," said Mabel, "she has been so ill before, won’t she get better?"
"She was never ill like this before," said Mrs. Clutterbuck. "We will see what the message says."
They found a wire at home. At the end of a sparkling day, it came to that. While they had listened to these golden voices, Miss Annie had----
The telegram lay there to say that Miss Annie had died.
Mr. Leighton departed from his first feelings of hurry where Mabel and Jean were concerned, and delayed their home coming till Elma was in a condition not to be retarded by any extra excitement.
They drove away at last from the club early in the morning, so that they had the entire house to see them off. It was very nearly as bad as leaving Ridgetown.
"I shall not be able to walk past your door for some days," said one red-haired girl. "Oh, don’t I know that feeling?"
She was compelled to stay in London, with only a fortnight’s holiday in summer time.
"I shall send you forget-me-nots by every post," said Jean. "You’ll be in love with the new girl in a week."
They had gifts from all of the girls stowed away somewhere. What a morning! Even the hall porter showed signs of dejection at their going.
"It will never be the same without you, miss," he said to Mabel.
One’s own family were not so complimentary.
Mabel and Jean left in a heaped-up four-wheeler.
"I feel quite sick, you know," said Jean.
It was a historic statement, and Mabel had her own qualms. They left a houseful of good little friendly people, a dazzling, hard-working London, and they were going back--to the wedding of Isobel. Mabel had not got over the feeling that drama only exists in a brilliant manner in London, and that life in one’s own home, though peaceful, was drab colour. It wouldn’t be drab colour, it would be radiant of course, if happy unexpected things happened there. How it would lighten to the colour of rose, oh gorgeous life, if such a thing could ever happen now! But it wouldn’t. All that would happen would be that Robin would marry Isobel and that she should keep on playing piano. Ah well, in any case, she could play piano a long way better than she ever did. And Jean could sing with a certain distinction of method. Not nearly ripe, this method, as Jean informed every one, but on the way. Her voice would be worth hearing at twenty-five.