The winter slipped away, melting into spring, and Cis had not left Beaconhite. Increasingly interested in her completely transformed life, growing daily fonder of Miss Braithwaite, Cicely continued to serve Mr. Lucas happily in his office, finding the great matters constantly beneath her fingers more and more intriguing, going at night back into that peacefully beautiful house, into its books, its charming talk, its lofty ideals. “I’m getting nicer and nicer!” Cis mocked herself one night in her own room, before her mirror. It was perfectly true; she was “getting nicer” and was becoming something far more than her adjective conveyed. When June came Miss Braithwaite announced to Cis that she was to take a vacation of three months and go with her touring the New England coast and the White Mountains. “I don’t know whether we shall go on up to Montreal or not; it shall be as we feel when the time comes. We will stop where we please, for as long as we please, and we will not measure our trip by miles but by satisfactions,” Miss Braithwaite said. Cis caught her breath in delight. “Gracious!” she exclaimed. “What a suggestion! It is rather flooring! But how can I go? I’ll lose my job! Mr. Lucas can’t hold on to a secretary who is flying all over New England!” “Easily,” replied Miss Braithwaite. “If you can broadcast a song by radio, you can broadcast a secretary by automobile! I’m not one bit afraid of your losing your job; besides, I’ve sounded Mr. Lucas!” Cis laughed. “Trust you to secure yourself--and me!” she cried. “Miss Braithwaite, I’ll probably die of joy on the way; simply blow right up in the car.” “Let us hope that the car will not blow up with you and me both in it!” retorted Miss Braithwaite, well pleased with Cis’s pleasure. “It is quite settled that we are to spend the summer on wheels. I want you to see the ocean breaking over the rocks of that coast, you who have seen the ocean only as it comes up on New Jersey sands. I want you to hear it cannonade into those rock-caves, and retreat from them in foam and spray. You’re too enthusiastic to miss a note of that vast harmony. Anselm Lancaster says if we go he will drive after us and join us somewhere for July and August.” “How fine!” cried Cis, frankly delighted. “That will keep us from missing the hearth, if we are inclined to. Mr. Lancaster will make it homelike, and how nice it will be for you to have him there to talk to!” Miss Braithwaite was regarding Cis sharply; she said: “Nice for you, too, will it not be? In case I’m in a lazy mood, he can drive you to any point that you should see.” “I’d hate to bother him,” said Cis. “But of course it will be great for me to have him with us. He’s no end good to me, takes me right in, because you do. Will he go alone?”