As the season went on Lily looked rather worn and fagged, which gave the supporters of the first hypothesis some ground; but when, in the spring, her own engagement came out, it supplied a sufficient reason, and gave a triumphant and clinching argument to the advocates of the second. She looked happy enough then, though her own family gave but a doubtful sympathy. Mr. Carey refused to say anything further than that he hoped Lily knew her own mind; she must decide for herself. Mrs. Carey looked sad, and changed the subject, saying there was no need of saying anything about it at present; she was sorry that it was so widely known and talked about. The younger Carey girls, Susan and Eleanor, openly declared that they hoped it would never come to anything. Poor Mr. Ponsonby! His picture was very handsome, and the parts of his letters they had heard were very nice, but he did not seem likely to get on in the world, and he could not expect Lily to wait forever. "Would you like to see his picture?--an amateur one, taken by a friend; and Lily says it does not do him justice." The photograph won the hearts of all the female friends of the family, who saw it in confidence, and increased their desire to see the original. But Mr. Ponsonby was not able, as had been expected, to come over in the summer. Violent rains and consequent floods in the Australian sheep-runs inflicted so much damage upon his stock that the marriage was again postponed, at least for a year, in which time he hoped to get things on a better basis. Lily kept up her spirits bravely. She did not go to Mount Desert with her mother and sisters, but stayed at home, wrote her letters, hemstitched her linen, declaring that she was glad of the time to get up a proper outfit, and went to bed early, keeping a pleasant home for her father and the boys as they went and came, to their huge satisfaction, and gaining in bloom and freshness; so that she was in fine condition in the fall to nurse her mother through a low fever caught at a Bar Harbor hotel, also to wait upon Susan, nervous and worn down with late hours and perpetual racket, and Eleanor, laid up with a sprained ankle from an overturn in a buckboard. Eleanor, though not yet eighteen, was to come out next winter, Lily declaring that she should give up balls--what was the use when one was engaged? She stayed at home and saw that her sisters were kept in ball-gowns and gloves, no light task, taking the part of Cinderella _con amore_. She certainly looked younger than Susan at least, who since she had taken up the Harvard Annex course, besides going out, began to grow worn and thin. One February morning Eleanor's voice rose above the usual babble at the Carey breakfast-table. "Can't I go, mamma?" "Where, dear?"