"Willing? I guess it's a case of 'he had to be resigned!'" said Robert Ferguson--thinking of that trip East, he was positively gay. But Cherry-pie's romance lapsed into household concerns: "We must have something the boy likes for breakfast." "Looking at Elizabeth will be all the breakfast he wants," Elizabeth's uncle said, with his meager chuckle. "David's as big a donkey as any of 'em, though he hasn't the gift of gab on the subject." When he had gone to his office, Miss White propped the telegram up on the table, so that Elizabeth's eyes might brighten the moment she opened the front door But to her dismay, Elizabeth did not open the door all that afternoon. Instead came a note, plainly in her hand, addressed to Mr. Ferguson. "Why! she is sending word that she's going to stay all night _again_ with Nannie," Miss White thought, really disturbed. If such a thing had been possible, Cherry-pie would have been vexed with her beloved "lamb," for after all, Elizabeth really ought to be at home attending to things! Miss White herself had spent every minute since the wonderful news had been flung at her, in attending to things. She had made a list of the people who must be invited to the wedding, she had inspected the china-closet, she had calculated how many teaspoons would be needed,--"Better borrow some forks from Nannie, too," she said, beginning, like every good housekeeper, to look careworn. "There's so much to be done!" said Cherry-pie, excitedly. Yet this scatter-brain girl evidently meant to stay away from home still another night. "Well, she can't, that's all there is to it!" Miss White said, decidedly; "she must come home, so as to be here in the morning when David arrives. Perhaps I'd better go down to Mrs. Maitland's and take her the despatch." She was getting ready to go, when the first rumble of the hurricane made itself heard. Nannie dropped in, and-- "'Where's Elizabeth?' I'm sure I don't know. Isn't she at home? 'Stayed with me last night?' Why, no, she didn't. I haven't seen Elizabeth for two days, and--" Nannie sprang to catch poor old Miss White, who reeled, and then tried, as she sank into a chair, to speak: "What? _What_? Not with you last night? Nannie! She must have been. She told me she was going--" Miss White grew so ghastly that Nannie, in a panic, called a servant. "Send for her uncle!" the poor lady stammered. "Send--send. Oh, what has happened to my child?" Then she remembered the letter addressed to Mr. Ferguson, lying on the table beside David's telegram. "Perhaps that will say where she is. Oh, tell him to _hurry!_" When Robert Ferguson reached home he found the two pallid, shaking women waiting for him in the hall. Miss White, clutching that unopened letter, tried to tell him: Elizabeth had not been at Nannie's; she had not come home; she had--