Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/86

pleasanter to stay there than to join the rest of the family on the larger piazza below. Her examinations had really tired her more than she had realized, and she was glad to have this time to herself. Her mind went back over the past year. Could it be only a year since she had sat with her father in that little adobe house in the hills of New Mexico, the place to which they had gone in their last effort to bring back that health which was never again to be his? He had lingered until September; and then the end had come so unexpectedly that Julia had not had time to send for any of her relatives in the East. But she had had Eliza with her,—good, faithful Eliza, who had understood her and sympathized with her, and had come with her on that sad journey across the continent. Her father’s will had been very explicit. He had requested that he should be buried in the old cemetery just outside the town where he died. In a letter he directed Julia, as soon as the funeral was over, to go immediately to Chicago. There she was to rest for a few days at the house of an old friend of his, who was also one of the executors of his will, and, as soon as possible, still under Eliza’s care, she was to go on to Boston to her uncle, Robert Barlow’s. Julia had obeyed her father’s commands, and had left the placing of the stone over his grave to his friend. Colonel Amsden, then stationed at Fort Marcy. Her stay in Chicago had so brightened her that when she reached Boston she had felt able to take up the work of the school which her cousin Brenda attended. Before she reached Boston, the faithful Eliza had had a letter from a brother