the summer that
followed; and, although he never came, Wilma was always alarming the
family, when affairs were especially unpropitious, by the query,
"What if he should suddenly drop in upon us _now_?"

"There's no use of your crying 'wolf' any longer," said Claribel,
impatiently, one rainy morning, near the middle of September. "He's
surely gone back to college by this time. What if a letter did come to
sister this morning, addressed in a strange handwriting? It is from
some new man on the _Sentinel_, probably."

"At any rate," insisted Wilma, "I wish it had come before sister went
to town, and if it should be from Mrs. Gorham's son, of all the
unlucky days in creation, he couldn't have chosen a worse time to
arrive. The situation is absolutely hopeless."

The two girls were in the attic, arrayed in their oldest wrappers.
Claribel, with her curly hair carefully tied up in a towel, was
ripping open an old feather bolster to convert it into sofa pillows.
Wilma, dragging out dusty boxes from under the eaves, was looking
through them for some remnants of linen for covers.

Their noses were blue with cold, for the wind whistled through the
broken panes of the attic windows. Early that morning Agnes had
started on her weekly trip to town to the _Sentinel's_ office. Her
face was white and set, and she had passed a sleepless night. The day
before, her manuscript, that was to have made the fortunes of her
little world, was returned to her from the publishers. It was more
than a disappointment to the three who had counted so confidently upon
its success. It was almost a tragedy in the shattering of such high
hopes. An intangible sense of loss had weighed on their spirits ever
since, almost as if some one lay dead in the great empty parlours
below.

It was a desire to rid themselves of the strange feeling of desolation
that brooded over the familiar rooms that sent the girls to the attic
as soon as Agnes left. Mam Daphne had brought the mail, as she often
did in rainy weather, and gone again. The sight of the letter
addressed to Agnes had given rise to Wilma's usual supposition, and
then silence followed for nearly an hour. It was broken by a sudden
thundering of the griffin's head against the great front door. The
girls' hearts seemed to leap up in their throats. They had not heard
that sound since the June day of Mrs. Gorham's visit.

"_Tom!_" ejaculated Wilma, in a terrified whisper, looking wildly
into Claribel's sta