"What! You will leave Mercer?" he said. In his dismayed astonishment he dropped his trowel and stood up. "Will you please tell me why I should stay in Mercer, when David is in Philadelphia?" Robert Ferguson was silent; then he tramped the earth in around the roots of the white peony, and said, sullenly, "It never occurred to me that you would go, too." "You'll have to be extra nice to Elizabeth when we are not here," Mrs. Richie instructed him. David's mother was very anxious to be nice to Elizabeth herself; which was a confession, though she did not know it, of her old misgivings as to David's choice. "Be nice? _I_?" said Mr. Ferguson, and snorted; "did you ever know me 'nice'?" "Always," she said, smiling. But he would not smile; he went back to his garden for some more roots; when he returned with a wedge taken from his bed of lemon-lilies, he said crossly, "David can manage his own affairs; he doesn't need apron-strings! I think I've mentioned that to you before?" "I think I recall some such reference," she admitted, her voice trembling with friendly amusement. But he went on growling and barking: "Foolish woman! to try the experiment at your age, of living in a strange place!" At that she laughed outright: "That is the nicest way in the world to tell a friend you will miss her." Robert Ferguson did not laugh. In fact, as the winter passed and the time drew near for the move to be made, nobody laughed very much. Certainly not the two young people; since David had left the medical school he had worked in Mercer's infirmary, and now they both felt as if the world would end for them when they ceased to see each other several times a day. David did his best to be cheerful about it; in fact, with that common sense of his which his engagement had accentuated, he was almost too cheerful. The hospital service would be a great advantage, he said, So great that perhaps the three years' engagement to which they were looking forward,--because David's finances would probably not be equal to a wife before that; the three years might be shortened to two. But to be parted for two years--it was "practically parting," for visits don't amount to anything; "it's tough," said David. "It's _terrific!_" Elizabeth said. "Oh, well," David reminded her, "two years is a lot better than three."