He was gone, but they felt as if a reviving breeze had passed over them, and when they went back to their mother’s room it was with serene faces.  If Charlotte swallowed hard at a lump in her throat, and Celia lingered an instant behind the rest to pinch the colour back into her cheeks, nobody observed it.  Perhaps each was too occupied with acting his own light-hearted part.  Somehow the minutes slipped away, and soon the travellers were at the door.

Into Mrs. Birch’s face, also, the colour had returned, summoned there, it may be, not only by the doctor’s stimulating draught, but by the insistence of her own will.

“Good-by! good-by!  God be with you all!” murmured Mr. Birch, breaking with difficulty away from Justin’s frantic hug.

Mrs. Birch, on Lansing’s arm, had gone down the steps to the carriage.  The father followed, surrounded by an eager group.  Only Lansing was to go to the train.  The others, as they crowded round the carriage door, were incoherently mingling parting messages.  Then presently they were left behind, a suddenly quiet, sober group.

Inside the carriage Mrs. Birch, with her hand in her eldest son’s, was saying to him things he never forgot, while his father looked steadily out of the window.

“I leave them in your care, dear,” she told Lansing, in the quiet, confident tones to which he was used from her.  “I could never go, I think, if I hadn’t such a strong, brave, trustworthy son to leave in care of the younger ones.  Celia will do her part, and do it beautifully, I know, but it’s on you I rely.”

“I’ll do my best,” he answered, cheerfully, although he felt, even more than before, the heavy responsibility upon him.

“I know you will.  Don’t let Celia overdo.  She will be so ambitious to run the household economically that she will set herself tasks she’s not fit for.  See that Jeff keeps steadily at his studies, and be lenient with Justin.  He adores you—­you can make the year do much for him if you take thought.  And with my little Charlotte—­be very patient, Lanse.  She will miss us most—­and show it least.”

“I doubt that,” thought Lanse, but aloud he said, “We’ll all hang together, mother, you may count on that.  We have our differences and our, eccentricities, but we’ve a lot of family spirit, and no one of us is going to sacrifice alone while the rest fail to take notice.  And you’re going to know all that goes on.  We’ve planned to take turns writing so that at least every other day a letter will start for New Mexico.”

“And if anything should go wrong?”

“Nothing will,” asserted Lansing.

“That you don’t know, dear,” said the gentle voice, not quite so steadily as before.  “If anything should come we must know.”

“I’ll remember,” he promised, reluctantly, his hand under pressure from hers.  But inwardly he vowed, “Anything short of real trouble you’ll not know, little mother.  Your children are stronger than you now, and they can bear some things for you.”