"I don't want to think of it. What's the matter with your Uncle James's house when the quarantine's lifted?" "Nothing. But it has only just been put on." "And the tournament next week. You _can't_ miss that! Oh, _Elliott_!" "I think," remarked Elliott pensively, "there ought to be a home opened for girls whose fathers are in France." "Why," asked Bess, gripped by a great idea, "why shouldn't you come to us while your uncle's house is quarantined?" Why not, indeed? Elliott thought Bess a little slow in arriving at so obvious and satisfactory a solution of the whole difficulty, but she was properly reluctant about accepting in haste. "Wouldn't that be too much trouble? Of course, it would be perfectly lovely for me, but what would your mother say?" "Mother will love to have you!" Miss Royce spoke with conviction. They spent the rest of the afternoon making plans and Elizabeth went home walking on air. But Mother, alas! proved a stumbling-block. "That would be very nice," she said, "very nice indeed; but Elliott Cameron has plenty of relatives. They will make some arrangement among them. I should hardly feel at liberty to interfere with their plans." "But her Aunt Elinor is going to France, and you know the James Camerons' house is in quarantine. That leaves only the Vermont Camerons--" "Oh, yes. I remember, now, there was a third brother. They have their plans, probably." And that was absolutely all Bess could get her mother to say. "But, Mother," she almost sobbed at last, "I--I _asked_ her!" "Then I am afraid you will have to un-ask her," said Mrs. Royce. "We really can't get another person into the house this summer, with your Aunt Grace and her family coming in July." Then it was that Elliott discovered the _impasse_. Try as she would, she could find no way out, and she lost a good deal of sleep in the attempt. To have to do something that she didn't wish to do was intolerable. You may think this very silly; if you do, it shows that you have not always had your own way. Elliott had never had anything but her own way. That it had been in the main a sweet and likable way did not change the fact. And how Stannard would gloat over her! He had had to do the thing himself, but secretly she had looked down on him for it, just as she had always despised girls who lamented their obligation to go to places where they did not wish to go. There was always, she had held, a way out, if you used your brains. Altogether, it was a disconcerted, bewildered, and thoroughly put-out young lady who, a week later, found herself taking the train for Highboro. The world--her familiar, complacent, agreeable world--had lost its equilibrium. CHAPTER II THE END OF A JOURNEY