“Why, what do you mean, Ned?” asked Zoe, in surprise.  “Are we not going too?”

“Not I, my dear; at least not for the winter:  business requires my presence here.  I hope, though, to be able to join you all for perhaps two or three weeks.”

“Not me; for I shall not go till you do,” she said with decision.  “You know you couldn’t spare me, don’t you?”

“I know I should miss you sadly,” he acknowledged, furtively passing his arm round her waist, for, as usual, they were seated side by side on a sofa; “but I know how you have been looking forward for months to this winter at Viamede, and I don’t intend you shall miss it for my sake.”

“But what have your intentions to do with it?” she asked, with a twinkle of fun in her eye and a saucy little toss of her pretty head.

“The question to be decided is what I intend; and I answer, ’Never to leave my husband, but to go when he goes and stay when he stays!’ What do you say to that?”

“That I am blest with the dearest of little wives,” he whispered close to her ear, and tightening his clasp of her waist.

They had nearly forgotten the presence of the others, who were too busy arranging the time for setting out upon their contemplated journey to notice this bit of by-play.

The children—­Lulu included—­were all in the room and listening with intense interest to the consultation of their elders.

At length it was settled that they would leave in a few days, and Rosie, Max, Grace, and Walter burst into exclamations of delight; but Lulu stole quietly and unobserved from the room and hurried to her own.

“Oh, I wonder,” she sighed to herself as she shut the door and dropped into a chair, “if I am to go too!  I wouldn’t be left behind for anything; and as there is a school there that I can be sent to as a day-scholar, maybe Mamma Vi will coax to have me go; she’s more likely to be in favor of taking me than anybody else—­unless it’s Grandma Elsie.”

Just then she heard footsteps coming up the stairs, through the hall, and into the adjoining room, and the voices of the three who were in her thoughts.

“What do you think about it, papa?” Elsie was saying.  “I should be very glad to have the dear child enjoy all that the rest of us do; but it must not be at the cost of spoiling your enjoyment.”

“I shall not allow it to do so,” Mr. Dinsmore answered.  “Lulu is a lovable child in spite of her very serious faults, and it would distress me to have her deprived of the delights of a winter at Viamede; which she has, I believe, been looking forward to with as great eagerness as any of the others, children or adults.”

“I know she has; and, dear grandpa, I thank you very much for your kind willingness to take her with us,” Violet responded feelingly; her mother adding,

“I also, papa; it would grieve me deeply to be compelled to leave her behind; especially as it must necessarily be in a boarding-school; Edward and Zoe being too young and inexperienced to take charge of her.”