Ann rose. "I'm going to-morrow, and I shan't be back this year.
I've taken passage on a steamer that's leaving for Liverpool next week!"

"Going abroad! Alone, Cousin Ann?"

"No, with a party of Cook's tourists."

"What a strange idea!" exclaimed Mrs. Carey.

"I don't see why; 'most everybody's been abroad. I don't expect to like
the way they live over there, but if other folks can stand it, I guess I
can. It'll amuse me for a spell, maybe, and if it don't, I've got money
enough to break away and do as I'm a mind to."

The last evening was a pleasant, friendly one, every Carey doing his or
her best to avoid risky subjects and to be as agreeable as possible.
Cousin Ann Chadwick left next day, and Mrs. Carey, bidding the strange
creature good-bye, was almost sorry that she had ever had any
arguments with her.

"It will be so long before I see you again, Cousin Ann, I was on the
point of kissing you,--till I remembered!" she said with a smile as she
stood at the gate.

"I don't know as I mind, for once," said Miss Chadwick. "If anybody's
got to kiss me I'd rather it would be you than anybody!"

She drove away, her two empty trunks in the back of the wagon. She
sailed for Liverpool the next week and accompanied her chosen party to
the cathedral towns of England. There, in a quiet corner of York
Minster, as the boy choir was chanting its anthems, her heart, an organ
she had never been conscious of possessing, gave one brief sudden
physical pang and she passed out of what she had called life. Neither
her family affairs nor the names of her relations were known, and the
news of her death did not reach far-away Beulah till more than two
months afterward, and with it came the knowledge that Cousin Ann
Chadwick had left the income of five thousand dollars to each of the
five Carey children, with five thousand to be paid in cash to Mother
Carey on the settlement of the estate.

XXXII

DOORS OF DARING

Little the Careys suspected how their fortunes were mending, during
those last days of June! Had they known, they might almost have been
disappointed, for the spur of need was already pricking them, and their
valiant young spirits longed to be in the thick of the fray. Plans had
been formed for the past week, many of them in secret, and the very next
day after the close of the academy, various business projects would
burst upon a waiting world. One Sunday night Mother Carey had read to
the little group a poem in