"Has he?" she pensively asked. Here was a new vexation. Obviously March, in writing him, had mentioned the rapid and happy growth of their acquaintance! "Yes," he replied, betraying fresh pain under an effort to speak lightly. "It may be a right smart while before I see you again, Miss Barb. I take the first express to Chicago, and next month I sail for Europe to----" "Why, Mr. March!" said Barbara with a nervous laugh. "Yes," responded John once more, thinking that if she was going to treat the thing as a joke he had better do the same, "immigrants for Widewood have got to be got, and they're not to be got on this side the big water." "Why, Mr. March!"--her laugh grew--"How long shall you stay?" "Stay! Gracious knows! I must just stay till I get them!--as your father says." "Why, Mr. March! When did--" the questioner's eyes dropped sedately to the ground--"when did you decide to go? Since--since--yesterday?" "Yes, it was!" The answer came as though it were a whole heart-load. The maiden's color rose, but she lifted her quiet, characteristic gaze to his and said, "You're glad you're going, are you not?" "O--I--why, yes! If I'm not I know I ought to be! To see Europe and all that is great, of course. It's beyond my dreams. And yet I know it really isn't as much what I'm going to as what I'm going from that I ought to--to be g-glad of! I hope I'll come back with a little more sense. I'm going to try. I promise you, Miss Barb. It's only right I _should_ promise--_you_!" "Why, Mr. Mar--" Her voice was low, but her color increased. "Miss Barb--O Miss Barb, I didn't come just to say good-by. I hope I know what I owe you better than that. I--Miss Barb, I came to acknowledge that I said too much yesterday!--and to--ask your pardon." Barbara was crimson. "Mr. March!" she said, half choking, "as long as I was simple enough to let it pass unrebuked you might at least have spared me your apologies! No, I can't stay! No, not one instant! Those girls are coming to speak to me--that man"--it was the drummer--"wants to speak to you. Good-by." Their intruders were upon them. John could only give a heart-broken look as she faltered an instant in the open door. For reply she called back, in poor mockery of a sprightly tone: "I hope you'll have ever so pleasant a voyage!" and shut the door. So it goes with all of us through all the ungraceful, inartistic realisms of our lives; the high poetry is ever there, the kingdom of romance is at hand; the only trouble is to find the rhymes--O! if we could only find the rhymes! LXXV. A YEAR'S VICISSITUDES It was during the year spent by John March in Europe that Suez first began to be so widely famous. It was then, too, that the Suez _Courier_ emerged into universal notice. The average newspaper reader, from Maine to Oregon, spoke familiarly of Colonel Ravenel as the writer of its much-quoted leaders; a fact which gave no little disgust to Garnet, their author.