ound it with three very lovable sisters, two
spinsters and a widow, who turned out to be old friends--former
intimates--of the Fairs. And now this intimacy had been revived; Mrs.
Fair had already been to see them once, although to do so she had come
up from Boston alone. How she had gone back the letter did not say.
Fannie felt the omission.

"I didn't think Barb would do me that way," she mused; and was no better
pleased when she recalled a recent word of Jeff-Jack's: that few small
things so sting a woman as to disappoint her fondness and her curiosity
at the same time. Now with men--However! All Barbara had omitted was
that Mrs. Fair had gone back with her son, who on his way homeward from
a trip to New York had been "only too glad" to join her here, and spend
two or three hours under spring skies and shingle roof with the three
pleasant sisters.

This was in the third of those six weeks during which Barbara had been
at college. About half of the two or three hours was spent in a stroll
along the windings of a small woodland river. The widow and Mrs. Fair
led the van, the two spinsters were the main body, and Henry and Barbara
straggled in the rear stooping side by side among white and blue
violets, making perilous ventures for cowslips and maple blossoms, and
commercing in sweet word-lore and dainty likes and dislikes.

When the procession turned, the two stragglers took seats on a great
bowlder round which the stream broke in rapids, Barbara gravely
confessing to the spinsters, as they lingeringly passed, that she had
never done so much walking in her life before as now and here in a place
where an unprotected girl could hire four hacks for a dollar.

The widow and Mrs. Fair left the others behind. They had once been
room-mates at school, and this walk brought back something of that old
relation. They talked about the young man at their back, and paused to
smile across the stream at some children in daring colors on a green
hillside getting sprouts of dandelion.

"Do you think," asked the widow, "it's really been this serious with him
all along?"

"Yes, I do. Henry's always been such a pattern of prudence and
moderation that no one ever suspects the whole depth of his feelings. He
realizes she's very young, and he may have held back until her mind--her
whole nature--should ripen; although, like him, as you see, she's ripe
beyond her years. But above all he's a dutiful son, and I believe he's
simply been wait