nstant.
Didn't you notice Allison? His eyebrows were almost up to his hair,
and they pulled his eyes so wide open they were perfectly round like
saucers. As for me I think mine went way up under my hair. I'm not
sure if they've got back to their natural place even yet!" And Leslie
laid a rosy finger over her brow, and felt anxiously along the
delicate velvety line.

"I shall go out and telegraph Mr. Luddington that you are willing,"
announced Allison as he hung up the dish-towel. "He'll get it in the
morning when he reaches Boston, and then he needn't fuss and fume any
longer about what he's going to do with us. Besides, I like to have
the bargain clinched somehow, and a telegram will do it." Allison
slammed out of the house noisily to the extreme confusion of Mrs.
Ambrose Perkins, who hadn't been able to eat her supper properly for
watching the house to see what would happen next. Who could that young
man be?

She simply couldn't get a clew; for, when she went over for the soda,
though she knocked several times, and heard voices up-stairs, and
altogether unseemly laughter for a house where there had just been a
funeral, not a soul came to the door! Could it be that Julia Cloud
heard her and stayed up-stairs on purpose? She felt that as the
nearest neighbor and a great friend, of Ellen's it would be rather
expected of her to find out what was going on. She resolutely
refrained from lighting the parlor lamp, and took up her station at
the dark window to watch; but, although she sat there until after ten
o'clock, she was utterly unable to find out anything except that the
household across the way stayed up very late and there were lights in
both front rooms again. She felt that if nothing developed by morning
she would just have to get Ambrose to hitch, up and drive out to
Ellen's. Ellen ought to know.

But Julia Cloud was serenely unconscious of this espionage. She had
entered an Eden of bliss, and was too happy to care about anything
else.

Seated on the big old couch in the parlor with a child on either side
of her, a hand in each of hers, often a head on each shoulder
nestling down, they talked. Planned and talked. Now the brother would
break in with some tale of his school-days; now the sister would add a
bit of reminiscence, just as if they had been storing it all up to
tell her. The joyous happiness of them all seemed like heaven dropped
down to earth. It was as she had sometimes dreamed mothers might talk
w