All that winter she studied hard, making progress, earning praise from her teachers and learning to use her really pleasing voice to better advantage. She soon grew accustomed to the new life and to enjoy it. She made new friends, young friends, and Jane Carter was careful that they should be, as Foster Townsend had especially directed, “of the right kind.” Each week-end she spent at home in the big house at Harniss. Usually, although not always, Miss Clark and Millard took Sunday dinner there. When, in June, the term ended she came back to be greeted with the news that she and her uncle were really going to California. The tickets had been purchased and they were to start in a few days. That was a glorious summer, spent amid scenes which turned to realities the pictures in the geographies and books of travel. Foster Townsend was a very satisfactory traveling companion. She had but to mention a wish to visit some new locality and her wish was granted. She had learned to like him long before, now she loved him. As for him, he was happier than he had been for years. He never would have admitted it, but this charming, talented niece of his was now his sincerest, his chief interest. Even the great lawsuit, dragging its eternal length along between one set of lawyers who prodded it on to the Supreme Court and another set who held it back, was secondary. When in his native town he was, of course, still active in politics and local affairs, but Varunas complained that the beloved trotters were neglected more than they ought to be. “About all the old man lives for nowadays,” vowed Mr. Gifford, “is Saturdays and Sundays. He’s either talkin’ about what happened last Sunday or what’s goin’ to happen next Sunday. I told him--last Tuesday, ’twas--that Claribel acted to me as if she’d strained her off foreleg. What do you cal’late he said? ‘Hum!’ says he, ‘did I tell you what the head of the Conservatory said last time I was up there? Said she had as promisin’ a suppranner as he’d heard since he commenced teachin’.’ What do you think of that for Foster Townsend to say when he had a lame mare on his hands? A year ago and he’d have cussed me from keel to main truck for lettin’ the mare get that way. Now if she’d broke her neck he wouldn’t have cared so long as Esther’s suppranner wan’t cracked. Well, she _is_ a smart girl, but she can’t do 2.18 around a mile track. Bah!”