“We are going away, you see,” she told her presently.  “Mother must have a change.  It does not suit her here in any way.  We are going to Lebanon for a little while; then we shall find some quiet place, in the mountains, perhaps.  In the winter, we shall have to board in the city.  Mother can’t be worried any longer; she must have what she wants.”

Miss Kirkbright glanced round the pretty parlor, as yet undisturbed; at all that, with such labor, Sylvie had arranged into a home a year ago.

“What a care for you, dear!  What will you do with everything?”

“We are going to store some of our furniture, and sell some.  Dot Ingraham is to take my plants for me till we come back to Boston; then I shall have them in our rooms.  I hope the gas won’t kill them.”

Rodney Sherrett said nothing after the first greeting for some minutes.  He only sat and listened, with a sober shadow in his handsome eyes.  All this was so different from anything he had anticipated.

By and by, in a little pause, he told her that he had come out to ask her for Class Day.

“I wouldn’t just send a card for the spread,” said he.  “Aunt Euphrasia wants you to go with her.  I’m in the Reward of Merit list, you see; I’ve earned my good time; been grinding awfully all winter.  I’ve even got a part for Commencement.  Only a translation; and it probably won’t be called; but wouldn’t you like to hear it, if it were?”

“O, I wish I could!” said Sylvie, replying in earnest good faith to the question he asked quizzically for a cover to his real eagerness in letting her know.  “I wish I could!  But we shall be gone.”

“Not before Class Day?”

“Yes; just about then.  I’m so sorry.”

Rod Sherrett looked very much as if he thought he had “ground” for nothing.

Then they talked about Lebanon, and the new Vermont Springs; perhaps Mrs. Argenter would go to some of them in July.  Miss Kirkbright told Sylvie of a dear little place she had found last year, in the edge of the White Mountain country; “among the great rolling hills that lead you up and up,” she said, “through whole counties of wonderful wild beauty; the sacred places of simple living that can never be crowded and profaned.  It is a nook to hide away in when one gets discouraged with the world.  It consoles you with seeing how great and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of his grand, pure heights.”

All the while Sylvie and Rodney had their own young disappointed thoughts.  They could not say them out; the invitation had been given and been replied to as it must be; this was only a call with Aunt Euphrasia; everything that they might have in their minds could not be spoken, even if they could have seen it quite clearly enough to speak; they both felt when the half hour was over, as if they had said—­had done—­nothing that they ought, or wanted to.  And neither knew it of the other; that was the worst.