replied, a little
breathlessly. "You know I'd be glad to see you, if you were in rags."

"All aboard!" cried the porter, grinning sympathetically.

Honora threw her arms around Aunt Mary and clung to her. How small and
frail she was! Somehow Honora had never realized it in all her life
before.

"Good-by, darling, and remember to put on your thick clothes on the cool
days, and write when you get to New York."

Then it was Uncle Tom's turn. He gave her his usual vigorous hug and
kiss.

"It won't be long until Christmas," he whispered, and was gone, helping
Aunt Mary off the train, which had begun to move.

Peter remained a moment.

"Good-by, Honora. I'll write to you often and let you know how they are.
And perhaps--you'll send me a letter once in a while."

"Oh, Peter, I will," she cried. "I can't bear to leave you--I didn't
think it would be so hard--"

He held out his hand, but she ignored it. Before he realized what had
happened to him she had drawn his face to hers, kissed it, and was
pushing him off the train. Then she watched from the platform the three
receding figures in the yellow smoky light until the car slipped
out from under the roof into the blackness of the night. Some faint,
premonitory divination of what they represented of immutable love in a
changing, heedless, selfish world came to her; rocks to which one might
cling, successful or failing, happy or unhappy. For unconsciously she
thought of them, all three, as one, a human trinity in which her faith
had never been betrayed. She felt a warm moisture on her cheeks, and
realized that she was crying with the first real sorrow of her life.

She was leaving them--for what? Honora did not know. There had been
nothing imperative in Cousin Eleanor's letter. She need not have gone
if she had not wished. Something within herself, she felt, was impelling
her. And it is curious to relate that, in her mind, going to school had
little or nothing to do with her journey. She had the feeling of faring
forth into the world, and she had known all along that it was destined
she should. What was the cause of this longing to break the fetters and
fly away? fetters of love, they seemed to her now--and were. And the
world which she had seen afar, filled with sunlit palaces, seemed very
dark and dreary to her to-night.

"The lady's asking for you, Miss," said the porter.

She made a heroic attempt to talk to Mrs. Stanley. But at the sight
of Peter's candy, when