Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/293

 and Cornelia's sister relinquished their places and withdrew. We played for an hour with the children. Cornelia, who sat opposite me, drew all the "honors" and "wooed" with hands full of seasons and dragons, while I steadily failed to complete my sequences and ended the evening with four winds, one of each kind, on my hands.

When we broke up for the night, Cornelia unfolded a plan for my assisting Mr. Blakewell with tutoring the children several hours a day for the next two weeks; and, as a matter of fact, we adhered strictly to the programme.

They gave me a cool bed in the guest-chamber, with a couch, at my discretion, prepared on the flat roof above, to which a staircase inside my room gave access. I chose the bed on the roof. I lay awake there for a long time, studying the constellations and the star clusters of the Milky Way, and recalling how, in the summer before, after the little flurry over the bobbed hair had kindled in my heart a faint flicker of hope, I had gone out at midnight with a strong field-glass, and had lain for hours in the ferns, trying in vain what I had often heard could easily be accomplished—to disjoint and separate the double stars.