ms as if I was
going back to my own family; to somebody who really belongs to you more
than just fourth cousins, you know. A godmother must be the next best
thing to a real mother, you see, Davy, because it's a mother that God
gives you to take the place of your own, when she is gone. Oh, let's
hurry home and tell Cousin Hetty."

Slipping from the window-sill to the floor, she carried the book she had
been reading back to its corner in the little red bookcase, and shut it
up with the musty volumes inside. Then she walked slowly down the narrow
aisle of the little meeting-house, between its double rows of narrow
straight-backed pews. As she reached the bench-like altar, extending in
front of the pulpit, she slipped to her knees a moment. Her sunbonnet
had fallen back from her tousled curls, and the late afternoon sun
streamed across her shining little face.

"Thank you, God," came in a happy whisper from the depths of a glad
little heart. "It's the nicest surprise you ever sent me, and I'm _so_
much obliged."

Then Betty stood up and put on her sunbonnet. The next moment she had
scrambled over the sill, pulled the window down after her, and walked
down the slanting board to the ground. Catching Davy by the hand, and
swinging it back and forth as they ran, she went skipping across the
road regardless of the dust. Down the lane they went, between the rows
of cherry-trees; across the orchard and up the path. Somehow the world
had never before seemed half so beautiful to Betty as it did now. The
May skies had never been quite so blue, or the afternoon sunshine so
heavenly golden. She sang as she went, swinging Davy's warm little hand
in hers. It was only one of Mother Goose's old melodies, but she sang it
as a bird sings, for sheer gladness:

"Gay go up and gay go down,
To ring the bells of London town."

CHAPTER III.

"ONE FLEW EAST."

The New York letter reached the hotel while Eugenia was out in the park
with her maid, and the bell-boy brought it to her on a salver with
several others, as she was stepping into the elevator to go up to her
room.

"Here, take my gloves, Eliot!" she exclaimed, tossing them to the maid,
and beginning to tear open the envelopes as soon as her hands were free.
Eliot, a plain, middle-aged woman, with a patient face and slow gait,
picked up the gloves, and followed her young mistress down the corridor.

Eugenia dashed into her sitting-room, throwing herself into a b