Quite a little group of friends assembled at the railway station to see her and Phil set off.  They were laden with flowers and fruit and “natural soda-water” with which to beguile the long journey, and with many good wishes and affectionate hopes that they might return some day.

“Something tells me that you will,” Mrs. Hope declared.  “I feel it in my bones, and they hardly ever deceive me.  My mother had the same kind; it’s in the family.”

“Something tells me that you must,” cried Poppy, embracing Clover; “but I’m afraid it isn’t bones or anything prophetic, but only the fact that I want you to so very much.”

From the midst of these farewells Clover’s eyes crossed the valley and sought out Mount Cheyenne.

“How differently I should be feeling,” she thought, “if this were going away with no real hope of coming back!  I could hardly have borne to look at you had that been the case, you dear beautiful thing; but I am coming back to live close beside you always, and oh, how glad I am!”

“Is that good-by to Cheyenne?” asked Marian, catching the little wave of a hand.

“Yes, it is good-by; but I have promised him that it shall soon be how-do-you-do again.  Mount Cheyenne and I understand each other.”

“I know; you have always had a sentimental attachment to that mountain.  Now Pike’s Peak is my affinity.  We get on beautifully together.”

“Pike’s Peak indeed!  I am ashamed of you.”

Then the train moved away amid a flutter of handkerchiefs, but still Clover and Phil were not left to themselves; for Dr. Hope, who had a consultation in Denver, was to see them safely off in the night express, and Geoff had some real or invented business which made it necessary for him to go also.

Clover carried with her through all the three days’ ride the lingering pressure of Geoff’s hand, and his whispered promise to “come on soon.”  It made the long way seem short.  But when they arrived, amid all the kisses and rejoicings, the exclamations over Phil’s look of health and vigor, the girls’ intense interest in all that she had seen and done, papa’s warm approval of her management, her secret began to burn guiltily within her.  What would they all say when they knew?

And what did they say?  I think few of you will be at a loss to guess.  Life—­real life as well as life in story-books—­is full of such shocks and surprises.  They are half happy, half unhappy; but they have to be borne.  Younger sisters, till their own turns come, are apt to take a severe view of marriage plans, and to feel that they cruelly interrupt a past order of things which, so far as they are concerned, need no improvement.  And parents, who say less and understand better, suffer, perhaps, more.  “To bear, to rear, to lose,” is the order of family history, generally unexpected, always recurring.