THE DAY’S JOURNEY [Illustration: “CECILY,” HE SAID SUDDENLY, “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?” [PAGE 260]] THE DAY’S JOURNEY BY NETTA SYRETT AUTHOR OF “ROSANNE,” “THE TREE OF LIFE,” ETC. “Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.” [Illustration] CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG & CO. 1906 COPYRIGHT A. C. MCCLURG & CO. 1906 Published September 15, 1906 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. THE DAY’S JOURNEY THE DAY’S JOURNEY CHAPTER I Rose Summers paused a moment before she lifted the latch of a little gate set between two walls of yew. It was June. The sky had the blue of larkspur, the air was sweet with the scent of flowers. The gate in the yew hedge opened upon a small flagged court leading to a porch wreathed with roses. Above the porch clematis and ivy continued the wall of living green almost to the gables of what had once been an Elizabethan farm-house, and was now the picturesque home of Robert Kingslake and of Cecily his wife. To the left, above a walled garden, great chestnut trees reared their heads, and flung shadows across the lane in which Mrs. Summers was standing. The stillness, broken only by the sleepy clucking of fowls, was of that peculiar peacefulness which broods over an English country-side. On the white dust in the road the shadows lay asleep. The trees themselves drowsed against the blue sky; the very roses above the house-porch laid their pink faces together, and, cradled in leaves, dreamt in the sunshine. Only a moment passed before Mrs. Summers lifted the latch, yet in that moment she saw in imagination one hill station after another; she hurried through adventures and experiences which had filled five years, and came back to the realization that, in the meantime, her cousin Cecily had just lived here at the Priory, listening to the clucking of the fowls, looking at the chestnut trees against the sky, perhaps tending the roses round the porch. She walked up the flagged path and rang the bell. The door was opened in a few moments by a neat maid, who said that Mrs. Kingslake was out. “But she won’t be long, ma’am, if you’ll come in,” she added. The porch led almost directly into one of those square, panelled halls which make the most charming of sitting-rooms. At the farther end a long, low casement window framed a vista of the garden--green, luxuriant, brilliant with flowers. On the window-ledge there was a china bowl of sweet peas. Mrs. Summers looked about her with interest. There was not much furniture, but each piece, though simple, was beautiful in form at least, and in some cases obviously rather costly. It was furniture chosen with discretion. “Better off than they used to be,” was her mental comment.