Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/173

 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