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"Oh, I thank you for bringing me here to Viamede, and for saying that I may gather as many of these as I please!" "I am very glad you enjoy it, dear child," Elsie answered. "It was one of my great pleasures as a child, and is such to this day."
The manner in which they would spend the approaching Christmas and New Year's Day was the principal subject of conversation, and the young folks were particularly interested in listening to the plans made or suggested, and well satisfied with the proposed arrangement that the cousins should spend the first at Viamede, all gather at Magnolia Hall for their New Year's dinner, and pass the evening of that day at the parsonage.
The study-hour over, they gathered in groups, chatting together on such themes as school-girls find most interesting, one or another now and then looking askance at Lulu, who sat at a distance, lonely and forlorn, watching them and half-envying their apparent gayety and lightheartedness. How she longed for Evelyn, Grace, Max; even Rosie and the grown up-people at Viamede!
"Oh, yes, indeed," she answered brightly; "Viamede is so lovely, a sort of earthly paradise I have always thought, and I am really delighted at the thought of showing it to you. Ah, I am quite sure, having your dear society there, I shall enjoy it more than ever!" "Thank you, dearest," was his smiling response.
The babies and even the older folks, not excepting papa himself, seemed deeply interested, and more delighted than before that they were so soon to see Viamede.
It was not a lengthened epistle. He began with an acknowledgment of the receipt of his mother's letter, expressed his sympathy in the sorrow and suffering at Viamede, gave a brief account of his accident, consequent illness, and partial recovery, highly eulogizing Zoe as the best of wives and nurses.
She began with a truthful report of her efforts to escape becoming one of Signor Foresti's pupils and its failure; giving verbatim the conversations on the subject in which she had taken part; then described with equal faithfulness all that had passed between the signor and herself on the day of their collision, and all that followed in the school-room and at Viamede.
The Viamede family remained to its close, held a little pleasant talk with the relatives from the parsonage and Magnolia Hall, then drove back to Viamede, reaching there just in time for dinner. In the afternoon the captain gathered his family and the servants under the trees in the lawn, read and expounded a portion of scripture, and led them in prayer and the singing of several familiar hymns.
She had not seen Evelyn since early the day before, and was longing to have a talk with her, particularly about the delightful prospect of going to Viamede to spend some months there together; and when at last the sound of child voices and laughter, coming up from below, told her that lessons were over, she sprang up and ran hastily down the stairs, looking eagerly for her friend.
They obeyed and were charmed with mamma's story of what she had done and seen at Viamede when she was a little girl, and of dear grandma being once a baby girl in the very same house, and how dearly all the old servants loved her, and how they mourned when she was taken away to live with her grandpa at Roseland.
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