“How long do you mean to be away?” asked Dr. Carr, divided between pleasure at these compliments to Katy and dismay at the idea of losing her.
“About a year, I think. My plans are rather vague as yet; but my idea was to spend a few weeks in Scotland and England first,—I have some cousins in London who will be good to us; and an old friend of mine married a gentleman who lives on the Isle of Wight; perhaps we might go there. Then we could cross over to France and visit Paris and a few other places; and before it gets cold go down to Nice, and from there to Italy. Katy would like to see Italy. Don’t you think so?”
“I dare say she would,” said Dr. Carr, with a smile. “She would be a queer girl if she didn’t.”
“There is one reason why I thought Italy would be particularly pleasant this winter for me and for her too,” went on Mrs. Ashe; “and that is, because my brother will be there. He is a lieutenant in the navy, you know, and his ship, the ‘Natchitoches,’ is one of the Mediterranean squadron. They will be in Naples by and by, and if we were there at the same time we should have Ned to go about with; and he would take us to the receptions on the frigate, and all that, which would be a nice chance for Katy. Then toward spring I should like to go to Florence and Venice, and visit the Italian lakes and Switzerland in the early summer. But all this depends on your letting Katy go. If you decide against it, I shall give the whole thing up. But you won’t decide against it,”—coaxingly,—“you will be kinder than that. I will take the best possible care of her, and do all I can to make her happy, if only you will consent to lend her to me; and I shall consider it such a favor. And it is to cost you nothing. You understand, Doctor, she is to be my guest all through. That is a point I want to make clear in the outset; for she goes for my sake, and I cannot take her on any other conditions. Now, Dr. Carr, please, please! I am sure you won’t deny me, when I have so set my heart upon having her.”
Mrs. Ashe was very pretty and persuasive, but still Dr. Carr hesitated. To send Katy for a year’s pleasuring in Europe was a thing that had never occurred to his mind as possible. The cost alone would have prevented; for country doctors with six children are not apt to be rich men, even in the limited and old-fashioned construction of the word “wealth.” It seemed equally impossible to let her go at Mrs. Ashe’s expense; at the same time, the chance was such a good one, and Mrs. Ashe so much in earnest and so urgent, that it was difficult to refuse point blank. He finally consented to take time for consideration before making his decision.
“I will talk it over with Katy,” he said. “The child ought to have a say in the matter; and whatever we decide, you must let me thank you in her name as well as my own for your great kindness in proposing it.”
“Doctor, I’m not kind at all, and I don’t want to be thanked. My desire to take Katy with me to Europe is purely selfish. I am a lonely person,” she went on; “I have no mother or sister, and no cousins of my own age. My brother’s profession keeps him at sea; I scarcely ever see him. I have no one but a couple of old aunts, too feeble in health to travel with me or to be counted on in case of any emergency. You see, I am a real case for pity.”
Mrs. Ashe spoke gayly, but her brown eyes were dim with tears as she ended her little appeal. Dr. Carr, who was soft-hearted where women were concerned, was touched. Perhaps his face showed it, for Mrs. Ashe added in a more hopeful tone,—
“But I won’t tease any more. I know you will not refuse me unless you think it right and necessary; and,” she continued mischievously, “I have great faith in Katy as an ally. I am pretty sure that she will say that she wants to go.”
And indeed Katy’s cry of delight when the plan was proposed to her said that sufficiently, without need of further explanation. To go to Europe for a year with Mrs. Ashe and Amy seemed simply too delightful to be true. All the things she had heard about and read about—cathedrals, pictures, Alpine peaks, famous places, famous people—came rushing into her mind in a sort of bewildering tide as dazzling as it was overwhelming. Dr. Carr’s objections, his reluctance to part with her, melted before the radiance of her satisfaction. He had no idea that Katy would care so much about it. After all, it was a great chance,—perhaps the only one of the sort that she would ever have. Mrs. Ashe could well afford to give Katy this treat, he knew; and it was quite true what she said, that it was a favor to her as well as to Katy. This train of reasoning led to its natural results. Dr. Carr began to waver in his mind.
But, the first excitement over, Katy’s second thoughts were more sober ones. How could papa manage without her for a whole year, she asked herself. He would miss her, she well knew, and might not the charge of the house be too much for Clover? The preserves were almost all made, that was one comfort; but there were the winter clothes to be seen to; Dorry needed new flannels, Elsie’s dresses must be altered over for Johnnie,—there were cucumbers to pickle, the coal to order! A host of housewifely cares began to troop through Katy’s mind, and a little pucker came into her forehead, and a worried look across the face which had been so bright a few minutes before. Strange to say, it was that little pucker and the look of worry which decided Dr. Carr.
“She is only twenty-one,” he reflected; “hardly out of childhood. I don’t want her to settle into an anxious, drudging state and lose her youth with caring for us all. She shall go; though how we are to manage without her I don’t see. Little Clover will have to come to the fore, and show what sort of stuff there is in her.”
“Little Clover” came gallantly “to the fore” when the first shock of surprise was over, and she had relieved her mind with one long private cry over having to do without Katy for a year. Then she wiped her eyes, and began to revel unselfishly in the idea of her sister’s having so great a treat. Anything and everything seemed possible to secure it for her; and she made light of all Katy’s many anxieties and apprehensions.
“My dear child, I know a flannel undershirt when I see one, just as well as you do,” she declared. “Tucks in Johnnie’s dress, forsooth! why, of course. Ripping out a tuck doesn’t require any superhuman ingenuity! Give me your scissors, and I’ll show you at once. Quince marmalade? Debby can make that. Hers is about as good as yours; and if it wasn’t, what should we care, as long as you are ascending Mont Blanc, and hob-nobbing with Michael Angelo and the crowned heads of Europe? I’ll make the spiced peaches! I’ll order the kindling! And if there ever comes a time when I feel lost and can’t manage without advice, I’ll go across to Mrs. Hall. Don’t worry about us. We shall get on happily and easily; in fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if I developed such a turn for housekeeping, that when you come back the family refused to change, and you had just to sit for the rest of your life and twirl your thumbs and watch me do it! Wouldn’t that be fine?” and Clover laughed merrily. “So, Katy darling, cast that shadow from your brow, and look as a girl ought to look who’s going to Europe. Why, if it were I who were going, I should simply stand on my head every moment of the time!”
“Not a very convenient position for packing,” said Katy, smiling.
“Yes, it is, if you just turn your trunk upside down! When I think of all the delightful things you are going to do, I can hardly sit still. I love Mrs. Ashe for inviting you.”
“So do I,” said Katy, soberly. “It was the kindest thing! I can’t think why she did it.”
“Well, I can,” replied Clover, always ready to defend Katy even against herself. “She did it because she wanted you, and she wanted you because you are the dearest old thing in the world, and the nicest to have about. You needn’t say you’re not, for you are! Now, Katy, don’t waste another thought on such miserable things as pickles and undershirts. We shall get along perfectly well, I do assure you. Just fix your mind instead on the dome of St. Peter’s, or try to fancy how you’ll feel the first time you step into a gondola or see the Mediterranean. There will be a moment! I feel a forty-horse power of housekeeping developing within me; and what fun it will be to get your letters! We shall fetch out the Encyclopaedia and the big Atlas and the ‘History of Modern Europe,’