“It is what he wished for,” she told them when she had finished. “Mr. Garven, the man to whom he wrote, seems to be much interested and even excited about the new machine, for he says that the gas turbine principle is one over which many people have been working, but no one with any success. He says that he will come to see it at any time that my father appoints.” She refolded the letter slowly. “It is rather bitter,” she added, with a trifle of a catch in the voice that had been so brave and steady until now, “rather bitter that this should have come by Donald’s hand and just too late!” “But it is not too late,” Betsey protested with vehemence. “David can show this man the machine, he has helped your father and knows just how it should run. And I am sure that the news that the invention has been tested and proved a success would help to make Mr. Reynolds well again. Oh, do try it—do try it.” She was bouncing up and down on the doorstep in her enthusiasm over the plan. To her great delight David supported the idea heartily. “There is no reason why any one who knows about such things should not see in a moment that the machine is a success,” he declared. “And it would surely do all of us good to find that your cousin was wrong.” “It might be so,” Miss Miranda agreed slowly. Elizabeth and David could actually hear the rising hope in her voice. “We can at least try. Oh, if it could only mean that things could right themselves at last!” A telegram was dispatched by David that very night and an anxious period of waiting was spent thereafter at the white cottage. “He is to come on Monday afternoon, that’s the day before our examinations begin,” Betsey told David when the final message from Mr. Garven had been received. She was so openly excited and impatient that it seemed impossible to endure quietly the slow passing of four days. “It will help us to forget the examinations are so near,” returned David. He was not often willing to admit his reluctance to see approach that day when he was to try his fate, but it was plain that he could not think of it with much pleasure or confidence. It meant too much to him, and the obstacles to his proper preparation had been too great. Monday came, Monday morning, seeming to be divided by the space of a year from Monday afternoon. Even Miss Miranda was openly nervous and as for Betsey, she could scarcely contain herself in her agony of suspense. If the scientist who was coming could actually pronounce the invention a success it would mean not only the remedying of present troubles that lay heavy on the household, but it would mark the end of a long period of struggle, self-denial and alternations of hope and discouragement.