o dry the cups and pans; then suddenly jumping ahead
and planning what they would do in the dear new home of the future.
They were all three as excited about it as if they had been a bridal
couple planning for their honeymoon.

"We shall want five bedrooms," said Leslie decidedly. "I've thought
that all out, one for each of us and two guest-rooms, so we can have a
boy and a girl home for overnight with us as often as we want to. And
there simply must be a fireplace, or we won't take the house. If there
isn't the right kind of a house in town, we'll choose some other
college. There are plenty of colleges, but you can have only one home,
and it must be the right kind. Then of course we want a big kitchen
where we can make fudge as often as we choose in the evenings, and a
dining-room with a bay-window, with seats and flowers and a canary.
Cloudy Jewel, you don't mind cats, do you? I want two at least. I've
been crazy for a kitten all the time I was in school, and Al wants a
big collie. You won't mind, will you?"

Suddenly Julia Cloud discovered that latent in her heart all these
years there had also lain a desire for a cat and a dog; and she lifted
guilty eyes, and confessed it. She felt a pang of remembrance as she
recalled how her mother used so often to tell her she was nothing but
an "old child."

"Perhaps your guardian will not think me a proper person to chaperon
you," she suggested in sudden alarm.

"Well, he'd just better not!" declared Allison, bristling up. "I'd
like to know where he could find a better."

"I've never been in society," said Julia Cloud thoughtfully. "I don't
know social ways much, and I've never been considered to have any
dignity or good judgment."

"That's just why we like you," chorused the children. "You've never
grown up and got dull and stiff and poky like most grown folks."

"We were so afraid," began Leslie, putting a loving arm about her
aunt's waist, "that you would have changed since we were children. We
talked it all over on the way here. We had a kind of eyebrow code by
which we could let each other know what we thought about it without
your seeing us. We were to lift one eyebrow, the right one, if we were
favorably impressed, and draw down the left if we were disappointed.
But in case we were sure both eyebrows were to go up. And of course we
were sure you were just the same dear the minute we laid eyes on you,
and all four of our eyebrows went high as they'd go the first i