“No you ain’t slippin’ away,” she said. “You’ll see ’em again. You are good for ten years more, and so am I, and I am seventy-eight. Wipe up, there’s somebody comin’.” He wiped up, and under the combined effects of a traveller who wanted dinner and Dotty’s assurance of ten years longer lease of life he was quite cheerful until he heard the rumble of the train which was to take Roy and Fanny away. Then a sense of loneliness came over him again and he kept whispering to himself, “Good bye, good bye, Mark’s gal and Craig’s boy. I shall never see you again. Good bye.” CHAPTER IV. INEZ. Mrs. Prescott had spent the winter in Southern California, and some time in April was registered at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, with her daughter and maid. As her meals were served in her private parlor and she seldom stopped in the public reception room, she saw none of the guests of the house, except a few New Yorkers who were stopping there. Fanny, on the contrary, saw everybody, and flitted through the hotel like a sunbeam, with a pleasant word for those she knew and a smile for those she did not know. Her mother sometimes tried to restrain her from being so free with people, telling her that since she had heard of the circumstances of her birth she had developed a most plebeian taste. “If I have it _tastes_ good,” Fanny would answer, laughingly, “and I am a great deal happier in liking people and having them like me than I was when I felt that the world was made for me and only a select few had a right to share it with me.” She was very happy and enjoyed everything thoroughly. Time was passing and only a few months remained before her return to Roy, who wrote her nearly every day. In his last letter he told her he had been to Ridgefield. “I was in Worcester,” he wrote, “and I took the electric, for I wanted to see Uncle Zach again. He is a case, isn’t he? He had the rheumatism and can scarcely walk. Poor old man! He cried when he spoke of the days when our parents were there making love to each other. He was quite poetic in his lamentations. ‘No more matin’ of birds, here,’ he said. ‘They’ve all flew off to the Tremont House, leavin’ me nothin’ but some _dum_ English sparrers.’ He talked a great deal of your father and a boy Jeff. Said he didn’t believe he was dead, and he should be perfectly happy if he were with him again, turnin’ summersaults! That would be funny, as Jeff, if living, must be over thirty. Of course I visited your property, which, if possible, looks more dilapidated than when we were there last November. It has quite a fascination for me, and I really mean, with your permission, and your mother’s, to build a cottage there, where we can spend a few weeks every summer.