“Exactly.  There always was a moon, I believe.  It is quite customary.”

As Stuart Lambert got out of the small car Philip and Carlotta came to him hand-in-hand like happy children.

Carlotta slipped away from Phil, put out both hands to his father.  He took them with a happy smile.

“I have a good many daughters, my dear,” he said.  “But I have always wanted to welcome one more.  Do you think you could take in another Dad?”

“I know I could,” said Carlotta lifting her flower face to him for a daughterly kiss.

“Come, come!  Where do I come in on this deal?  Where is my son, I’d like to know?” demanded Mr. Cressy.

“Right here at your service—­darnfoolness and all,” said Phil holding out his hand.

“Don’t rub it in,” snapped Harrison Cressy, though he gripped the proffered hand hard.  “Come on, Lambert.  This is no place for us.”

And the two fathers went down the hill in the hired car leaving Lizzie and the lovers in possession of the summit with the world which the moon was just turning to silver at their feet.

CHAPTER XXIII

SEPTEMBER CHANGES

When September came Carlotta, who had been ostensibly visiting Tony though spending a good deal of her time “in the moon with Phil” as she put it, departed for Crest House, carrying Philip with her “for inspection,” as he dubbed it somewhat ruefully.  He wasn’t particularly enamored of the prospect of being passed upon by Carlotta’s friends and relatives.  It was rather incongruous when you came to think of it that the lovely Carlotta, who might have married any one in the world, should elect an obscure village store keeper for a husband.  But Carlotta herself had no qualms.  She was shrewd enough to know that with her father on her side no one would do much disapproving.  And in any case she had no fear that any one even just looking at Phil would question her choice.  Carlotta was not the woman to choose a man she would have to apologize for.  Phil would hold his own with the best of them and she knew it.  He was a man every inch of him, and what more could any woman ask?

Ted went up for his examinations and came back so soberly that the family held its composite breath and wondered in secret whether he could possibly have failed after all his really heroic effort.  But presently the word came that he had not only not failed but had rather covered himself with glory.  The Dean himself, an old friend of Doctor Holiday’s, wrote expressing his congratulations and the hope that this performance of his nephew’s was a pledge of better things in the future and that this fourth Holiday to pass through the college might yet reflect credit upon it and the Holiday name.

Ted himself emphatically disclaimed all praise whatsoever in the matter and cut short his uncle’s attempt at expressing his appreciation not only of the successful finish of the examinations but the whole summer’s hard work and steadiness.