"Bruce, Rob!" she murmured. "Lester took me out in the garden and--He said he wanted to celebrate Hester's triumph by getting her a new cousin--He meant me, Rob!" "Yes, he's been meaning you for some time," said Rob grimly. "What did you say?" "What could I say?" said Frances simply, "but one thing?" "Oh, just listen to that!" growled Bruce, and walked away. Frances looked from his retreating back to Rob's perturbed face. "Rob!" she cried, "what have you done?" "Nothing, nothing in this wide world!" cried Rob hysterically. "I should like to know why I should do anything? I hope you will be very happy, Frances, and I'm sure you will, because Lester Baldwin is a nice fellow, and if you don't mind marrying him, why you're sure to be happy." And Rob walked off in the opposite direction from the one Bruce had taken, leaving Frances to accept this dubious congratulation from her oldest friend, and to comfort herself with the reflection which she had often heard her grandmother make, that "heaven was full of days," and that Bruce and Rob would see another dawn. CHAPTER THIRTEEN ITS GAINS AND LOSSES "It will be a miserable summer," thought Rob despondently, keeping her face away from the range of Wythie's eyes as she stood before the glass brushing her hair for the night while her sister lay peacefully on her pillow, waiting for Rob to lie down beside her. Oswyth's and her mother's discretion and consideration oppressed Rob. They must have noticed that Bruce went home alone that night for the first time since Battalion B had been added to the assets of the little grey house, but they seemed not to see it. Rob, annoyed with herself, with Bruce, with fate, with the world in general and growing up in particular, suspected Frances of having given them a hint of her suspicions as to Rob's bad behavior that evening when she announced to them her own happiness. For Wythie watched her sister with a gentle gaze that Rob felt in her spine, but, contrary to their girlish custom, did not seem inclined to gossip over the happenings of that night. She let perturbed Rob alone so considerately that Rob longed to complain of her cruelty. Rob felt very much as she had felt when, in her childish days after some misdemeanor her mother had "left her to her conscience," as the good Mardy used to say, a process that was harder to endure than the whipping which she had never received would have been.