, and be as happy as he could.

How anxious the doctor was to have Alice go; how fearful lest she should
not; and how relieved when asked by 'Lina one night to go with her the
next morning and see Miss Johnson off. There were Mrs. Worthington and
'Lina, Dr. Richards and Irving Stanley, and a dozen more admirers, who,
dazzled with Alice's beauty, were dancing attendance upon her to the
latest moment, but none looked so sorry as Irving Stanley, or said
good-by so unwillingly, and 'Lina, as she saw the wistful gaze he sent
after the receding train, playfully asked him if he did not feel some
like the half of a pair of scissors.

The remark jarred painfully on Irving's finer feelings, while the
doctor, affecting to laugh and ejaculate "pretty good," wished so much
that his black-eyed lady were different in some things.

CHAPTER XVII

HUGH

An unexpected turn in Hugh's affairs made it no longer necessary for him
to remain in the sultry climate of New Orleans, and just one week from
his mother's departure from Spring Bank he reached it, expressing
unbounded surprise when he heard from Aunt Eunice where his mother had
gone, and how she had gone.

"Fool and his money soon parted," Hugh said. "I can fancy just the dash
Ad is making. But who sent the money?"

"A Mrs. Johnson, an old friend of your mother's," Aunt Eunice replied,
while Hugh looked up quickly, wondering why the Johnsons should be so
continually thrust upon him, when the only Johnson for whom he cared was
dead years ago.

"And the young lady--what about her?" he asked, while Aunt Eunice told
him the little she knew, which was that Mrs. Johnson wished her daughter
to come to Spring Bank, but she did not know what they had concluded
upon.

"That she should not come, of course," Hugh said. "They had no right to
give her a home without my consent, and I've plenty of young ladies at
Spring Bank now. Oh, it was such a relief when I was gone to know that
in all New Orleans there was not a single hoop annoyed on my account. I
had a glorious time doing as I pleased."

"And yet you've improved, seems to me," Aunt Eunice said.

"Oh, I'll turn out a polished dandy by and by, who knows?" Hugh
answered, laughingly; then helping his aunt to mount the horse which had
brought her to Spring Bank, he returned to the house, which seemed
rather lonely, notwithstanding that he had so often wished he could once
more be alone, just as he was before his mother came.