her my note."

Cries reverberated under the great glass dome, and trains pulled out
with deafening roars. Honora had a strange feeling, as of pressure from
within, that caused her to take deep breaths of the smoky air. She but
half heard what was being said to her: she wished that the train would
go, and at the same time she had a sudden, surprising, and fierce
longing to stay. She had been able to eat scarcely a mouthful of that
festal dinner which Bridget had spent the afternoon in preparing,
comprised wholly of forbidden dishes of her childhood, for which Bridget
and Aunt Mary were justly famed. Such is the irony of life. Visions
of one of Aunt Mary's rare lunch-parties and of a small girl peeping
covetously through a crack in the dining-room door, and of the gold
china set, rose before her. But she could not eat.

"Bread and jam and tea at Miss Turner's," Uncle Tom had said, and she
had tried to smile at him.

And now they were standing on the platform, and the train might start at
any moment.

"I trust you won't get like the New Yorkers, Honora," said Aunt Mary.
"Do you remember how stiff they were, Tom?" She was still in the habit
of referring to that memorable trip when they had brought Honora home.
"And they say now that they hold their heads higher than ever."

"That," said Uncle Tom, gravely, "is a local disease, and comes from
staring at the tall buildings."

"Uncle Tom!"

Peter presented the parcel under his arm. It was a box of candy, and
very heavy, on which much thought had been spent.

"They are some of the things you like," he said, when he had returned
from putting it in the berth.

"How good of you, Peter! I shall never be able to eat all that."

"I hope there is a doctor on the train," said Uncle Tom.

"Yassah," answered the black porter, who had been listening with evident
relish, "right good doctah--Doctah Lov'ring."

Even Aunt Mary laughed.

"Peter," asked Honora, "can't you get Judge Brice to send you on to New
York this winter on law business? Then you could come up to Sutcliffe to
see me."

"I'm afraid of Miss Turner," declared Peter.

"Oh, she wouldn't mind you," exclaimed Honora. "I could say you were an
uncle. It would be almost true. And perhaps she would let you take me
down to New York for a matinee."

"And how about my ready-made clothes?" he said, looking down at her. He
had never forgotten that.

Honora laughed.

"You don't seem a bit sorry that I'm going," she