mma!" Lottie blandly persisted. "I
promised to let Mr. Plumpton know."

"Yes, so as to get a chance to write to him," said Boyne. "I guess when
he sees your spelling!"

"Momma! Do wake up! What time does our steamer sail?"

A light of consciousness came into Mrs. Renton's eyes at last, and she
sighed gently. "We're not going, Lottie."

"Not going! Why, but we've got the tickets, and I've told--"

"Your father has decided not to go, for the present. We may go later in
the summer, or perhaps in the fall."

Boyne looked at his father's troubled face, and said nothing, but Lottie
was not stayed from the expression of her feelings by any ill-timed
consideration for what her father's might be. "I just know," she fired,
"it's something to do with that nasty Bittridge. He's been a bitter dose
to this family! As soon as I saw Ellen have a letter I was sure it was
from him; and she ought to be ashamed. If I had played the simpleton
with such a fellow I guess you wouldn't have let me keep you from going
to Europe very much. What is she going to do now? Marry him? Or doesn't
he want her to?"

"Lottie!" said her mother, and her father glanced up at her with a face
that silenced her.

"When you've been half as good a girl as Ellen has been, in this whole
matter," he said, darkly, "it will be time for you to complain of the
way you've been treated."

"Oh yes, I know you like Ellen the best," said the girl, defiantly.

"Don't say such a thing, Lottie!" said her mother. "Your father loves
all his children alike, and I won't have you talking so to him. Ellen
has had a great deal to bear, and she has behaved beautifully. If we are
not going to Europe it is because we have decided that it is best not to
go, and I wish to hear nothing more from you about it."

"Oh yes! And a nice position it leaves me in, when I've been taking
good-bye of everybody! Well, I hope to goodness you won't say anything
about it till the Plumptons get away. I couldn't have the face to meet
them if you did."

"It won't be necessary to say anything; or you can say that we've merely
postponed our sailing. People are always doing that."

"It's not to be a postponement," said Kenton, so sternly that no one
ventured to dispute him, the children because they were afraid of him,
and their mother because she was suffering for him.

At the steamship office, however, the authorities represented that it
was now so near the date of his sailing that they could