The next morning there was no arrival, even tardy, of the visitors from the hotel.  Instead came a letter, breaking the startling news that Aunt Victoria had been called unexpectedly to the East, and had left on the midnight train, taking Arnold with her, of course.  Judith burst into angry expressions of wrath over the incompleteness of the cave which she and Arnold had been excavating together.  The next day was the beginning of school, she reminded her auditors, and she’d have no time to get it done!  Never!  She characterized Aunt Victoria as a mean old thing, an epithet for which she was not reproved, her mother sitting quite absent and absorbed in the letter.  She read it over twice, with a very puzzled air, which gave an odd look to her usually crystal-clear countenance.  She asked her husband one question as he went out of the door.  “You didn’t see Victoria yesterday—­or say anything to her?” to which he answered, with apparently uncalled-for heat, “I did not!  I thought it rather more to the purpose to try to look up Pauline.”

Mrs. Marshall sprang up and approached him with an anxious face.  He shook his head:  “Too late.  Disappeared.  No trace.”

She sat down again, looking sad and stern.

Professor Marshall put on his hat with violence, and went away.

When he came home to luncheon there was a fresh sensation, and again a disagreeable one.  He brought the astounding news that, at the very beginning of the semester’s work, he had been deserted by his most valuable assistant, and abandoned, apparently forever, by his most-loved disciple.  Saunders had left word, a mere laconic note, that he had accepted the position left vacant by the dismissal of Arnold’s tutor, and had entered at once upon the duties of his new position.

Professor Marshall detailed this information in a hard, level voice, and without further comment handed his wife Saunders’ note.  She read it rapidly, this time with no perplexity, and laid it down, saying to her husband, briefly, “Will you kindly remember that the children are here?”

Judith looked at Sylvia in astonishment, this being the first time that that well-worn phrase, so familiar to most children, had ever been heard in the Marshall house.  Why shouldn’t Father remember they were there?  Couldn’t he see them?  Judith almost found the idea funny enough to laugh at, although she had not at all in general Sylvia’s helpless response to the ridiculous.  Sylvia did not laugh now.  She looked anxiously at her father’s face, and was relieved when he only answered her mother’s exhortation by saying in a low tone:  “Oh, I have nothing to say.  It’s beyond words!”

Luncheon went on as usual, with much chatter among the children.  Some time later—­in the midst of a long story from Lawrence, Mrs. Marshall herself brought up the subject again.  Buddy was beginning to struggle with the narrative form of self-expression, and to trip his tongue desperately over the tenses.  He had just said, “And the rabbit was naughty, didn’t he was?” when his mother exclaimed, addressing her husband’s grim face, “Good Heavens, don’t take it so hard, Elliott.”