warm, windless and musical with sounds
of spring. The maples and the elms had adorned themselves with most
bewitching greens, the dandelions beckoned from sunny banks, and through
the radiant mist, the nesting birds were calling. In a flood, all the
ancient witchery of the valley, all of the Homestead's loveliest
associations came back to soften my mood, to regain my love. Wrought
upon by the ever-returning youth of the world--a world to which my
daughters were akin, I relented, "We will come back. Cruel as some of
its memories are, this is home, I belong here, and so does Mary Isabel."

The sunlight streaming into my mother's chamber lay like a fairy carpet
on the floor, waiting for the dancing feet of her grandchildren. Her
spirit filled the room, calling to me, consoling me, convincing me.

All day I worked at trimming vines, and planting flowers while the
robins chuckled from the lawn, and the maples expanded overhead. How
spacious and wide and safe the yard appeared, a natural playground for
the use of children.

And so it came about that on June seventeenth, just before Constance's
second birthday, Mary Isabel and I took the night train for West Salem,
leaving Zulime and the nurse to follow next morning. Greatly excited at
the prospect of going to sleep on the cars my daughter went to her bed.
"I kick for joy," she said, her eyes shining with elfin delight.

She loved the "little house" as she called her berth, and for an hour
she lay peering out at the moon. "It follows us!" she cried out in
pleased surprise.

"Yes, it is a kindly moon. It will keep right along overhead all the way
to West Salem. But you must go to sleep now. I shall call you early in
the morning to meet Grandfather."

She was a reasonable soul, entirely confident of my care, and so,
putting her head on my arm, she went away to dreamland. At such times
my literary ambitions and failures were of no account. [To wish myself
back there with that tiny form beside me is folly--but I do--I do!]

In the cool lusciousness of the June morning we met Grandpa, and as we
entered the gate of the Homestead (which Mary Isabel only dimly
remembered), I said, "This is your home, daughter, you belong here."

"Can I pick the flowers? Can I walk on the grass?" she asked quickly.

"Yes, pick all you want. You can _roll_ on the grass if you wish."

Too excited to eat any breakfast, she ran from posy bed to posy bed, and
from tree to tree, indefatigable as a