"That charming little girl with the dark braids, going to
England," she heard some man on the steamer say. The ranch, the
chickens, weeds, and preserving, the dusty roads and shabby stores
of Los Lobos were gone; she was no longer a gawky child; she was a
young lady in a loose, soft, rough blue coat, with a black quill
in her soft blue hat.

England received her wandering son coolly, but Rachael never knew
it. Her radiant dream--or was it an awakening?--went on. Her
mother, a neat, faded, querulous little woman, whose one great
service was in sparing her husband any of the jars of life, was
keyed to frantic anxiety lest Jerry be unappreciated, now that he
had come back. Clara met the few men to whom her husband
introduced her in London with feverish eagerness; afraid--after
fifteen years--to say one word that might suggest her own concern
in Jerry's future, quivering to cross-examine him, when they were
alone, as to what had been said, and implied, and suggested.

Nothing definite followed. They lived for a month or two at a
delightful roomy boarding-house in London, where the modest meals
Clara ordered appeared as if by magic, and where Miss Fairfax
never sullied her pretty hands with dishwashing. Then they went to
visit "Aunt Elsie" in a suburban villa for several weeks, a visit
Rachael never thought of afterward without a memory of stuffy,
neat, warm rooms, and a gushing of canaries' voices. Then they
went down to Sussex, in the delicious fullness of spring, to live
with several other persons in a dark country house, where "Cousin
Harold" died, and there was much odorous crepe and a funeral.
Cousin Harold evidently left something to Gerald. Rachael knew
money was not an immediate problem. Hot weather came, and they