Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/87

Rh in Maine, urging her to come to him to take care of his motherless children.

“You don’t really need me now, Miss Julia,” Eliza had said; “but I promise you that if you ever do I will come  to you.”

So Eliza had gone away a day or two after Julia found herself settled in her uncle’s house, and she had taken with her the faithful setter, “Prince,” who for several years had been the companion of Julia’s wanderings.

“A city house ain’t no place for a dog—even if your aunt wanted him, and I kind of understand that she  don’t. He can roam where he wants to at my brother’s farm, and perhaps next summer you can have him with you at the shore.”

But in the late spring Prince had died,—“of old age,” Eliza had written, and Julia, though she had not said so very much about it, had really felt his death deeply. Perhaps you may think it foolish for a girl who had just taken her preliminary examinations for College to sit in the moonlight on a warm June evening, shedding a tear as she thought of the faithful old dog whom she was never  to see again. But Julia felt no shame as she sighed, “Poor Prince,” and wiped away the tears.

The murmur of voices came up to her from the piazza below. But she felt no desire to go down.

“Julia, Julia,” called Brenda, “we want you.”

“Please excuse me,” responded Julia; “I really am tired. Let me say good-night from the balcony.”

“A perfect Juliet,” cried Nora, running out on the path