, springing to her feet a few
minutes later. "Virginia has written me a dozen times that when we crossed
that red bridge we should begin to get ready. I suppose I ought to comb my
hair. It's a sight! But Virginia'll be so happy she'll never notice in all
this world!"

Virginia was assuredly too happy to notice disheveled heads or
smoke-stained faces or wrinkled suits when she saw her own dear Aunt Nan
and her very best friends step excitedly from the train onto the little
station platform. That queer sinking feeling inside vanished, and only joy
was left.

"It's come true! It's come true!" she kept crying as she greeted them all.
"Just think, Priscilla, it's really happening this minute! You're all in
my country at last--Donald's and mine!"

So the world looked very beautiful to them all as they drove homeward. The
three boys on the front seat became acquainted and re-acquainted, while
the Vigilantes and Aunt Nan behind held one another's hands and asked
question after question of the happy Virginia. No, she told them, the days
weren't all as perfect, but most of them were. Yes, the sunflowers grew
wild all in among the grain. No, there were no snakes very near. Yes, it
was truly sixty-five miles away to the farthest mountains. No, she had
never been so happy in all her life.

They stopped at the Keith ranch to receive a copyrighted Western welcome,
and to leave Jack and Carver. Donald would drive the girls home, and then
return. Mr. David, Mother Mary, Malcolm and little Kenneth--all the Keith
family--came to greet them. It seemed to Jack Williams as though he had
never received a welcome so genuine; and to the hungry and tired Carver
Standish III the simple brown ranch-house, surrounded by cottonwoods and
set about by wide grain-fields, possessed a charm unsurpassed by the most
stately mansions of New England.

The Vigilantes and Aunt Nan received as genuine a welcome a half hour
later when they drove down the long avenue of cottonwoods to Virginia's
home. It came not only from a tall, bronzed man, who shared his little
daughter's joy, but also from a white-aproned, kind-faced woman in the
doorway, and a quiet, stooped man by Aunt Nan's marigolds.

"I know it's Hannah," cried Priscilla, running to the doorway. "She looks
just as though she knew all about the German measles!"

"And I'm sure this is William," said Mary a little shyly, as she shook
hands with the quiet man by the garden. "It just couldn't be--any