Mr. Travilla seconded her invitation, and after some urging, it was accepted.

It proved an agreeable arrangement for all concerned.  “Cousin Ronald” was the same genial companion that he had been eight years before, and the two lads were worthy of their sire, intelligent and well-informed, frank, simple hearted and true.

The young people made acquaintance very rapidly.  The Exposition was a theme of great and common interest, discussed at every meal, and on the days when they stayed at home to rest; for all found it necessary to do so occasionally, while some of the ladies and little ones could scarcely endure the fatigue of attending two days in succession.

Then through the months of July and August, they made excursions to various points of interest, spending usually several days at each; sometimes a week or two.

In this way they visited Niagara Falls, Lakes Ontario, George and Champlain, the White Mountains, and different seaside resorts.

At one of these last, they met Lester Leland again.  The Travillas had not seen him for nearly a year, but had heard of his welfare through the Lelands of Fairview.

All seemed pleased to renew the old familiar intercourse; an easy matter, as they were staying at the same hotel.

Lester was introduced to the Scotch cousins, as an old friend of the family.

Mr. Lilburn and he exchanged a hearty greeting and chatted together very amicably, but Malcom and Hugh were only distantly polite to the newcomer and eyed him askance, jealous of the favor shown him by their young lady cousins, whose sweet society they would have been glad to monopolize.

But this they soon found was impossible even could they have banished Leland; for Herbert Carrington, Philip Ross, Dick Percival and his friends, and several others soon appeared upon the scene.

Elsie was now an acknowledged young lady; Violet in her own estimation and that of her parents’, still a mere child; but her height, her graceful carriage and unaffected ease of manner—­which last was the combined result of native refinement and constant association with the highly polished and educated, united to childlike simplicity of character and utter absence of self-consciousness—­often led strangers into the mistake of supposing her several years older than she really was.

Her beauty, too, and her genius for music and painting added to her attractiveness, so that altogether, the gentlemen were quite as ready to pay court to her as to her sister, and had she been disposed to receive their attentions, or to push herself forward in the least, her parents would have found it difficult to prevent her entering society earlier than was for her good.

But like her mother before her, Vi was in no haste to assume the duties and responsibilities of womanhood.  Only fifteen she was

    “Standing with reluctant feet
     Where the brook and river meet,
     Womanhood and childhood fleet.”