"It is altogether probable that you can. We shall be at home by the first of September. Why, what has become of Martine?" Amy looked toward the chair where Martine had been sitting a few minutes before. It was certainly empty. "I'll run up to her room;" and, suiting her action to her word, in a moment Amy was knocking at Martine's door. In answer to a feeble "Come in" she entered, only to find Martine lying face downward on the bed. "Why, what is the matter, child?" she asked, affectionately stroking Martine's hair. "Oh, nothing," came in muffled tones from the prostrate Martine, "only this has been such a long day." "You are tired," responded Amy, "and probably you were more excited than you realized when you and Priscilla were lost." "We weren't lost"--Martine threw considerable spirit into her voice,--"I knew just where we were." "But we did not--" Amy, though amused, tried not to show her amusement--"we were rather alarmed, so really my mother and I ought to be the persons to collapse. Come, Martine, even if you are tired, you must cheer up, and go to bed." [Illustration: "'Why, what is the matter, child?' she asked affectionately."] "It isn't because I'm tired," and Martine's tears flowed afresh, "but I thought that to-night there would be a letter from my mother. There must be a mail in, and I have counted up the time from New York. There ought to be a letter to-night. I am sure that she's worse." "Nonsense, child. Probably she does not feel quite well enough to write, and your father has overlooked the mail. You know how apt men are to forget." So Amy tried to pacify Martine, and at last succeeded in getting her to look at things more cheerfully. She had never before seen Martine in low spirits, and she felt quite sure that fatigue, even more than disappointment, had caused the tears. "I will admit," she said, "that this has been a trying day, beginning with--" "Beginning with Mr. Knight,"--and now Martine was smiling. "Wasn't he funny, with his 'you Americans,' as if we were some strange species?" "But in the end don't you think that Mr. Knight did pretty well? I think that he more than redeemed himself by his kindness." "Well, as he is a friend of Balfour Airton's I suppose that I ought not to criticise him. There, don't shake your head, Amy. Yes, I do think that he was very kind--in the end. But the day has been fearfully long. We ought not to have taken that walk this morning." When at last Martine went to bed Amy sat beside her until she fell asleep. There was a strange mingling of childishness and womanliness in this little Chicagoan to which Amy could not accustom herself. Her worldly wisdom and grown-up air of womanliness were quite as hard to understand as the extreme childishness in which she sometimes indulged. The more equable Priscilla was much easier to comprehend, and yet Amy was not altogether sure that Priscilla, under stress of circumstances, would be the easier to manage. CHAPTER XVIII