the evening, and it lacked but an hour of train-time.
They all looked at the slender figure in the easy chair. They had learned in these last two weeks to take note of their mother's appearance as, with easy confidence in her exhaustless strength, they had never done before. Since the night when they had learned that she was not quite well, they had discovered for themselves the delicacy of the smiling face, the thinness of the graceful body, the many small signs by which those who run may read the evidences of lessened vitality, if their eyes are once opened. They wondered that they had not seen it all before, and found the only explanation in the cheery, undaunted spirit which had covered up every sign of fatigue.
"She is too tired already," declared Celia. "Run away, and let father and me finish."
But they would not go. How could they, with only an hour left? They subdued their voices, and ran whispering about. Jeff held a long conference in an undertone with his mother. Justin perched on the arm of her chair, with his head on her shoulder, and she would not have him taken away, her own heart sick within her at thought of the long absence from them all. Altogether, when one took into account the preceding fortnight of making ready for the trip, it was not strange that in this last hour of preparation she gave out entirely.
The first they knew of it was when Mr. Birch, with a low exclamation, sprang across the room, and catching up his wife in his arms, carried her to a couch.
"Water!" he said. "And open the window!"
Startled, they obeyed him. It was only a brief unconsciousness, and the lovely brown eyes when they unclosed were as full of bravery as ever, but Mr. Birch spoke anxiously to Lansing in the hall outside.
"I don't like to start with her, as worn-out as this," he said. "Yet everything is engaged--the state-room and all--and I don't want to delay without reason. There's not time to send to the city for Doctor Forester. Suppose you telephone Doctor Ridgway to come around and tell us what to do about starting. If he is out, try Sears or Barton. Have him hurry. We've barely forty-five minutes now."
In three minutes Lansing came back and beckoned his father out of the room.
"They're all out," he said, "I tried old Doctor Hitchcock, too, but he's sick in bed. How about that new doctor that's just moved in next door? I like his looks. He certainly will know enough to advise about this."
Mr. Birch hesitated a moment. "Well, call him," he decided.
Lansing was already down the stairs. Three minutes later he returned with the young doctor. Mr. Birch met them in the hall.
"Doctor Churchill, father." Mr. Birch looked keenly into a pair of eyes whose steady glance gave him instantly the feeling that here was a man to trust.
The young people waited impatiently outside while Doctor Churchill spent fifteen quiet minutes with their father and mother. When Mr. Birch came to the door again with the physician, he was looking relieved.
Doctor Churchill paused before the little group, his eyes glancing kindly at each in turn, as he spoke to Lansing. He certainly was young but there was about him an air of quiet confidence and decision which one felt instinctively would be justified by further acquaintance.
"Don't be anxious," he said. "All this hurry of preparation has been a severe test on her, taken with her reluctance to leave her home. She is feeling stronger now, and it will be better for her to get the leave-taking over than to postpone and dread it longer. You will all make it easy for her--No breakdowns," he cautioned, with a smile. "New Mexico is a great place, and you are doing the best thing in the world in getting her off before cold weather."
He was gone, but they felt as if a reviving breeze had passed over them, and when they went back to their mother's room it was with serene faces. If Charlotte swallowed hard at a lump in her throat, and Celia lingered an instant behind the rest to pinch the colour back into her cheeks, nobody observed it. Perhaps each was too occupied with acting his own light-hearted part. Somehow the minutes slipped away, and soon the travellers were at the door.
Into Mrs. Birch's face, also, the colour had returned, summoned there, it may be, not only by the doctor's stimulating draught, but by the insistence of her own will.
"Good-by! good-by! God be with you all!" murmured Mr. Birch, breaking with difficulty away from Justin's frantic hug.
Mrs. Birch, on Lansing's arm, had gone down the steps to the carriage. The father followed, surrounded by an eager group. Only Lansing was to go to the train. The others, as they crowded round the carriage door, were incoherently mingling parting messages. Then presently they were left behind, a suddenly quiet, sober group.
Inside the carriage Mrs. Birch, with her hand in her eldest son's, was saying to him things he never forgot, while his father looked steadily out of the window.
"I leave them in your care, dear," she told Lansing, in the quiet, confident tones to which he was used from her. "I could never go, I think, if I hadn't such a strong, brave, trustworthy son to leave in care of the younger ones. Celia will do her part, and do it beautifully, I know, but it's on you I rely."
"I'll do my best," he answered, cheerfully, although he felt, even more than before, the heavy responsibility upon him.
"I know you will. Don't let Celia overdo. She will be so ambitious to run the household economically that she will set herself tasks she's not fit for. See that Jeff keeps steadily at his studies, and be lenient with Justin. He adores you--you can make the year do much for him if you take thought. And with my little Charlotte--be very patient, Lanse. She will miss us most--and show it least."
"I doubt that," thought Lanse, but aloud he said, "We'll all hang together, mother, you may count on that. We have our differences and our, eccentricities, but we've a lot of family spirit, and no one of us is going to sacrifice alone while the rest fail to take notice. And you're going to know all that goes on. We've planned to take turns writing so that at least every other day a letter will start for New Mexico."
"And if anything should go wrong?"
"Nothing will," asserted Lansing.
"That you don't know, dear," said the gentle voice, not quite so steadily as before. "If anything should come we must know."
"I'll remember," he promised, reluctantly, his hand under pressure from hers. But inwardly he vowed, "Anything short of real trouble you'll not know, little mother. Your children are stronger than you now, and they can bear some things for you."
At the train it took all Lansing's determination, sturdy fellow though he was, to keep up his cheerful front. The colour had ebbed away from Mrs. Birch's face once more, and as she put up her arms to her tall son, in the little state-room, she seemed to him all at once so small and frail that he could not endure to see her go away from them all, facing even the remote possibility that in the new land she might fail to find again her old vigour.
It had to be done, however. Lansing received her clinging good-by, whispered in her ear something which would have been unintelligible to any but a mother's intuition, so choky was his voice, gripped his father's hand with both his own, turned and smiled back at the two as he pulled open the door, and swung off the train just as it began to move.
He raced away over the streets to take a trolley-car for home, having dismissed the carriage, and craving nothing so much as a long walk in the cool September night.
At home he found everybody gone to bed except Celia, who met him at the door. She smiled at him, but he could see that she had been crying. Although he had carried home a heavy heart, he braced himself to begin his task of keeping the family cheered up.
"Off all right!" he announced, in a casual tone, as if he had just sent away the guests of a week. "Splendid train, jolly state-room, porter one of the 'Yassir, yassir' kind. Judge and Mrs. Van Camp were taking the same train as far as Chicago. That will do a lot toward making things pleasant to start with."
"I'm so glad!" Celia agreed. "How did mother get off? Did her strength keep up?"
"Pretty well--better than I'd have thought