again. It was not there. I stood up and shook myself, and then looked on the
floor. The car was full of people, who were going home from the opera, and they
all stared at me, but I was past caring for a little thing like that.
“But I could not find my fare. I concluded I must have put it in my mouth and
swallowed it inadvertently.
“I didn’t know what to do. Would the conductor, I wondered, stop the car and
put me off in ignominy and shame? Was it possible that I could convince him
that I was merely the victim of my own absentmindedness, and not an
unprincipled creature trying to obtain a ride upon false pretenses? How I wished
that Alec or Alonzo were there. But they weren’t because I wanted them. If I
HADN’T wanted them they would have been there by the dozen. And I couldn’t
decide what to say to the conductor when he came around. As soon as I got one
sentence of explanation mapped out in my mind I felt nobody could believe it
and I must compose another. It seemed there was nothing to do but trust in
Providence, and for all the comfort that gave me I might as well have been the
old lady who, when told by the captain during a storm that she must put her trust
in the Almighty exclaimed, ‘Oh, Captain, is it as bad as that?’
“Just at the conventional moment, when all hope had fled, and the conductor
was holding out his box to the passenger next to me, I suddenly remembered
where I had put that wretched coin of the realm. I hadn’t swallowed it after all. I
meekly fished it out of the index finger of my glove and poked it in the box. I
smiled at everybody and felt that it was a beautiful world.”
The visit to Echo Lodge was not the least pleasant of many pleasant holiday
outings. Anne and Diana went back to it by the old way of the beech woods,
carrying a lunch basket with them. Echo Lodge, which had been closed ever
since Miss Lavendar’s wedding, was briefly thrown open to wind and sunshine
once more, and firelight glimmered again in the little rooms. The perfume of
Miss Lavendar’s rose bowl still filled the air. It was hardly possible to believe
that Miss Lavendar would not come tripping in presently, with her brown eyes a-
star with welcome, and that Charlotta the Fourth, blue of bow and wide of smile,
would not pop through the door. Paul, too, seemed hovering around, with his
fairy fancies.
“It really makes me feel a little bit like a ghost revisiting the old time glimpses
of the moon,” laughed Anne. “Let’s go out and see if the echoes are at home.
Bring the old horn. It is still behind the kitchen door.”
The echoes were at home, over the white river, as silver-clear and
multitudinous as ever; and when they had ceased to answer the girls locked up