over 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.

But true love is not selfish. In time it accustoms itself to anything
which secures happiness for its object. Dr. Carr did confide to Katy in a
moment of private explosion that he wished the Great West had never been
invented, and that such a prohibitory tax could be laid upon young
Englishmen as to make it impossible that another one should ever be landed
on our shores; but he had never in his life refused Clover anything upon
which she had set her heart, and he saw in her eyes that her heart was
very much set on this. John and Elsie scolded and cried, and then in time
began to talk of their future visits to High Valley till they grew to
anticipate them, and be rather in a hurry for them to begin. Geoff's
arrival completed their conversion.

"Nicer than Ned," Johnnie pronounced him; and even Dr. Carr was forced to
confess that the sons-in-law with which Fate had provided him were of a
superior sort; only he wished that they didn't want to marry _his_ girls!

Phil, from first to last, was in favor of the plan, and a firm ally to the
lovers. He had grown extremely Western in his ideas, and was persuaded in
his mind that "this