At the same moment Thomas opened the door. "The carriage is waiting," he announced, with a slight catch in his voice. Hazel walked out of the room. Her uncle’s eyes followed the little figure until the closing of the door hid it from his sight. Then he looked, slowly and discontentedly, around the room. "It is quite true," he murmured aloud, "it is dark—much too dark." *CHAPTER XI* Doris and Phyllis Travers clung close to their friend and guest, Hazel Le Mesurier, for the eve of her departure had come. This was the last long day to be spent together, and they were determined to make the most of it. With arms twined about one another’s waists, the three slim maidens sauntered through the sunny meadow toward the river, with the intention of spending a couple of hours upon its banks in the quiet enjoyment of one another’s society. "If you could only stay a day or two longer," sighed Doris, while Phyllis edged yet closer, and in silence pressed the hand she held in hers. "I must go," Hazel said resolutely. "You see," she reiterated for the third time, "you must be home for your birthday, rather particularly for a seventeenth birthday." With the first part of this assertion her friends agreed cordially, but upon the soundness of the added clause they were dubious. Twelve-year-old Phyllis nodded, meekly puzzled; sixteen-year-old Doris looked for more, as one who, while wishing to be perfectly reasonable, yet felt an explanation of so bold a statement to be her due. Hazel was conscious of the lack of absolute sympathy, and set about removing any doubts upon the point that it was but natural the two young girls should entertain. "Seventeen," she resumed, "is rather a special age. You might almost say it marks an epoch in one’s life. It is a great step from sixteen. At sixteen you may think childhood is completely over and for ever gone, but it isn’t. Only you have to be seventeen to be aware how young sixteen was"; and she regarded Doris meditatively. "It is an age," she went on, "when, if your parents can afford it, you are presented at Court and ’brought out.’ You generally begin with a dance at home. You put on your first long dress, you do up your hair, though, to be sure, some young women wait for all this till they are eighteen." She paused. "I think that is wiser," Doris said boldly, though with an inward misgiving that Hazel might hold that her ideas upon the subject were not valid, as issuing from the mouth of sixteen. "Seventeen seems too young for all that sort of thing; and it is always sad to cut short one’s youth. I always tell Phyllis to keep young as long as ever she can."