sure that there are no
distances in Heaven, and when we get there we shall find that we all are
to live next door to each other. It will be part of the happiness."

"Perhaps so. Meanwhile I am thankful that my happiness lives close to me
now. I don't have to wait till Heaven for that, which is the reason
perhaps that for some years past Earth has seemed so very satisfactory
to me."

"Geoff, what an uncommonly nice way you have of putting things," said
Clover, nestling her head comfortably on his arm. "On the whole I don't
think the High Valley is so _very_ far away."

CHAPTER VIII.

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.

"HAVE you seen Imogen Young to-day?" was Clover's first question on
getting home.

"No. Lionel was in for a moment at noon, and said she was preserving
raspberries; so, as I had a good deal to do, I did not go up. Why?"

"Oh, nothing in particular. I only wanted to know. Well, here we are,
left to ourselves with not a Rose to our name. How we _shall_ miss them!
There's a letter from Johnnie for you by way of consolation."

But the letter did not prove in the least consoling, for it was to break
to them a piece of disappointing news.

"The Daytons have given up their Western trip," wrote Johnnie. "Mrs.
Dayton's father is very ill at Elberon; she has gone to him, and there
is almost no chance of their getting away at all this summer. It really
is a dreadful disappointment, for we had set our hearts on our visit,
and papa had made all his arrangements to be absent for six
weeks,--which you know is a thing not easily done, or undone. Then Debby
and Richard had been promised a holiday, and Dorry was going in a yacht
with some friends to the Thousand Islands. It all seemed so nicely
settled, and here comes this blow to unsettle it. Well, _Dieu
dispose_,--there is nothing for it but resignation, and unpacking our
hopes and ideas and putting them back again in their usual shelves and
corners. We must make what we can of the situation, and of course, it
isn't anything so very hard to have to pass the summer in Burnet with
papa; still I was that wild with disappointment at the first, that I
actually went the length of suggesting that we should go all the same,
_and pay our own travelling expenses_! You can judge from this how
desperate my state of mind must have been! Papa, as you may naturally
suppose, promptly vetoed the proposal as impossible, and no doubt he was
right. I am growing gradually resigned t