you'd race me again to the gate of the Clove."

Burnside-in-the-Clove was a bonny place. The "burn," from which the farm
took its name almost as much as from the family which had dwelt there
for generations, ran through the velvet lawn and was spanned by a rustic
bridge where the well kept driveway curved toward the roomy house.

"Oh! it's so lovely here. The many, many windows, each more cheery and
inviting than its neighbor; the old-fashioned door, opened almost all
the time; the hammocks, the benches, the flowers, the cool, sweet
dairy--this is a _home_. I guess I'll make ours here instead of at
Fairacres, after all," laughed Amy, as they paced sedately over the
gravel, the better to enjoy the scene, and now that they had arrived, in
no such haste for the meeting with their people.

"I like to go slowly now, don't you, Hal? Because that makes the
pleasure 'long-drawn out' and all the sweeter. In a minute mother's face
will be in the doorway, with father looking over her shoulder. Friend
Adam, blessed man, will hobble after, if he is not too lame; and then we
shall jump off and the 'man' will take the burros, and we will go in and
hug everybody all round, and eat the biggest kind of a supper--living on
dry bread and milk two meals a day can give an appetite! And then one of
dear old Adam's 'Spirit' talks; and bed and sleep, and breakfast and
meeting, and--"

"'Spite House'!"

"No, Hallam, truly not. Our mother couldn't live in such a place.
To-morrow a new life will begin on the barren knoll. 'Charity House' she
will have it, and wherever our mother goes, softness and kindness and
loveliness are sure to follow."

"Yes, that is so," answered the cripple, thoughtfully. "Well, hear me,
Amy. I guess I have been about as much of a wet blanket as I could be,
but I'm going to try my very hardest to make things easy for father and
mother. Just now, as we rode down the valley into all this peace and
quiet, I seemed to see myself exactly as I am. Heigho! but look how
green the grass is still, late in the year as it is, and how beautiful
the vines on the stone walls. The maples are like a golden glory. My
father must have been wonderfully soothed by so much loveliness about
him, though he's going to feel it all the--"

"Take care, Sir Optimist, that is to be. You're taking the wrong turn,
comrade. Come away from the down to 'has been,' and climb to 'will be,'
short metre."

It was all as they said. The mother's gentle f