“But you will be with us a part of every day?” returned Violet, with a wistful half-inquiring look up into his face.

“Yes, oh yes!” he hastened to say; “with my wife so near at hand I could not let a day go by without inflicting my presence upon her for some small part of it,” he concluded in a half jesting tone, and with a fond look down into the sweet, troubled face; for he was standing close at her side.

“I think it could not be harder for you than for me, my dear,” she returned, with a loving smile up at him.  “I should like to take all the children,” she went on, “but Alma is here to make up some dresses for Lulu, and will need her at hand to try them on and make sure of the fit.”

“And I should seriously object to allowing Lulu to drop her studies again just as she has made a fresh and fair start with them,” said the captain; “so of course she will have to stay at home.  Grace also, I think, as there would be the same objection to her absence from home—­as regards the lessons I mean.”

“But if you will allow it, I can hear her recite at Ion,” Violet said.  “She could learn her lessons there and still have a good deal of time to play with her little sister, who thinks no one else quite equal to her Gracie,—­as she calls her,—­for a playfellow.”

“Well, my dear, we will make that arrangement if you wish it,” responded the captain.

“And yet how Lulu will miss her,” Violet said, a troubled look coming over her face.  “I wish we could manage it so that she could go too, the dear child!”

“I should be glad to give her the pleasure,” returned Captain Raymond; “but really think it will not do to have her studies so interfered with now when she has but just well settled down to them.  It will be a little hard for her, but perhaps not a bad lesson in patience and self-denial.”

“But a lesson I fear she will not enjoy,” remarked Violet, with a regretful smile.

Going into the schoolroom presently the captain found his two little girls industriously busy with their tasks.

“Gracie, daughter,” he said, “your mamma is going over to Ion for a few days, because Grandma Elsie is not very well and wants her companionship, and Mamma Vi wants you,—­for little Elsie’s sake,—­having found you very successful in entertaining her and baby Ned.  We are all invited, indeed; but I must be here the greater part of the time, as I have various matters to oversee, and Lulu cannot be spared from home as Alma is at work upon some dresses for her, and I wish her to go on diligently with her studies.”

“But don’t I need to be attending to mine, papa?” queried Grace, looking regretfully at her sister, over whose face had come a look of keen disappointment, succeeding one of pleased anticipation called out by the beginning of her father’s communication.

“Yes,” he said, with a smile; “we are going to let you attend to them there, Mamma Vi acting as governess.”