Captain Rayburn and Celia came over to establish themselves upon rugs and cushions by the side of the hammock. Mr. Birch, who had been out with Just and Norman in a boat, appeared, sunburned and warm, and joined the party.
"I've been wanting to get just this quartet together," remarked the captain, when his brother-in-law had cooled off and was lying comfortably stretched along a mossy knoll.
"Go ahead, Jack, we are ready to listen. Your plans are always interesting," Mr. Birch replied. "What now?"
"In the first place," began the captain, "I want you people to understand that the person who has had least fun out of this absence of yours is the young woman before you."
"O Uncle Ray!" protested Celia, instantly. "Haven't I had as much fun as you?"
"Hardly. Between Mrs. Fields and Miss Ellen Donohue I don't know when I've been so enlivened. I hardly know which of the two has afforded me more downright amusement, each in her way. But Celia, I tell you, Roderick and Helen, has been one brave girl, and that's all there is of it."
"You'll find no dissenting voice here," Celia's father declared, and her mother added:
"Nobody who knows her could expect her to be anything else."
"So now I want her to have her reward," said Captain Rayburn. "Let me take her with me for the year abroad."
Celia started, glancing quickly from her father to her mother, neither of whom looked so surprised as she would have expected. Both returned her gaze thoughtfully.
"How about the going to college?" Mr. Birch questioned. "I thought that was the great ambition."
"She shall have a four year's course in one if she comes with me. I shall spend much time in the libraries and art collections. My friends in several cities are people it is worth a long journey to meet. Undoubtedly such a year would be valuable at the end of a college course, and it may appear to you that the studies within the scholastic walls in this country had better come first. The point is that I am going now. I may not be, at the moment Celia takes her diploma. And the question of her health seems to me also one to be considered. Months of enforced quiet haven't been any too good for her."
"There's not much need to ask Celia what she would like," Mr. Birch observed.