“It was the year that was taken, Tom.”

He nodded.  The scene at the breakfast table came back to him, and the sight of Catherine standing respectfully in the hall, and of Honora, in the red sash, making the courtesy the old woman had taught her.

Honora recalled afterwards that Uncle Tom joked even more than usual that evening at dinner.  But it was Aunt Mary who asked her, at length, how she would like to go to boarding-school.  Such was the matter-of-fact manner in which the portentous news was announced.

“To boarding-school, Aunt Mary?”

Her aunt poured out her uncle’s after-dinner coffee.

“I’ve spilled some, my dear.  Get another saucer for your uncle.”

Honora went mechanically to the china closet, her heart thumping.  She did not stop to reflect that it was the rarest of occurrences for Aunt Mary to spill the coffee.

“Your Cousin Eleanor has invited you to go this winter with Edith and Mary to Sutcliffe.”

Sutcliffe!  No need to tell Honora what Sutcliffe was—­her cousins had talked of little else during the past winter; and shown, if the truth be told, just a little commiseration for Honora.  Sutcliffe was not only a famous girls’ school, Sutcliffe was the world—­that world which, since her earliest remembrances, she had been longing to see and know.  In a desperate attempt to realize what had happened to her, she found herself staring hard at the open china closet, at Aunt Mary’s best gold dinner set resting on the pink lace paper that had been changed only last week.  That dinner set, somehow, was always an augury of festival—­when, on the rare occasions Aunt Mary entertained, the little dining room was transformed by it and the Leffingwell silver into a glorified and altogether unrecognizable state, in which any miracle seemed possible.

Honora pushed back her chair.

Her lips were parted.

“Oh, Aunt Mary, is it really true that I am going?” she said.

“Why,” said Uncle Tom, “what zeal for learning!”

“My dear,” said Aunt Mary, who, you may be sure, knew all about that school before Cousin Eleanor’s letter came, “Miss Turner insists upon hard work, and the discipline is very strict.”

“No young men,” added Uncle Tom.

“That,” declared Aunt Mary, “is certainly an advantage.”

“And no chocolate cake, and bed at ten o’clock,” said Uncle Tom.

Honora, dazed, only half heard them.  She laughed at Uncle Tom because she always had, but tears were shining in her eyes.  Young men and chocolate cake!  What were these privations compared to that magic word Change?  Suddenly she rose, and flung her arms about Uncle Tom’s neck and kissed his rough cheek, and then embraced Aunt Mary.  They would be lonely.

“Aunt Mary, I can’t bear to leave you—­but I do so want to go!  And it won’t be for long—­will it?  Only until next spring.”

“Until next summer, I believe,” replied Aunt Mary, gently; “June is a summer month-isn’t it, Tom?”