brown leaf in a breeze. None
of them, except Father Bob, Mother Jess, and Laura, could keep still.
Laura went about like a person in a trance, with a strange, happy
quietness in her ordinarily energetic movements and a brightness in
her face that dazzled. There was no boisterousness in any one's
rejoicing, only a gentleness of gaiety that was very wonderful to see
and feel.

As for Elliott, she felt as though she had come out from underneath a
great dark cloud, into a place where she could never again be anything
but good and happy. She had been coming out ever since Aunt Jessica
reached home, but she hadn't come out the same as she went in. The
Elliott Aunt Jessica and Laura had left in charge when they went to
Camp Devens seemed very, very far away from the Elliott whose joy was
like wings that fairly lifted her feet off the ground. Smiles chased
one another among her dimples in ceaseless procession across her face.
She didn't try to discover why she felt so different. She didn't care.
The dimples, of course, were the very same dimples she had always had,
and at the moment the girl was entirely unconscious of their
existence, though as a matter of fact those dimples had never been
busier and more bewitching in all Elliott Cameron's life.

"I suppose," Mother Jess said at last, "we shall have to go to bed, if
we are to get Stannard off in the morning."

Going to bed isn't a very exciting thing to do when you are so happy
you feel as though you might burst with joy, but by that time the
Camerons had managed to work out of the most dangerous stage, and
inasmuch as Stannard's was an early train, going to bed was the only
sensible thing to do. So they did it.

What was more remarkable, the last sleepy Cameron straggled down to
the breakfast-table before the little car ran up to the door to take
Stannard away. They were really sorry to see him go and he acted as
though he were just as sorry to go, which would seem to indicate that
Stannard, too, had changed in the course of the summer. He looked much
like the long, lazy Stannard who had rebelled against a vacation on a
farm, but his carriage was better and his figure sturdier, and his
hands weren't half so white and gentlemanlike. Underneath his lazy
ease was a hint of something to depend on in an emergency. Perhaps
even his laziness wasn't so ingrained as it used to be.

They all went out on the veranda to say good-by and waved as long as
the car was in sight.

"So