both sauntered
slowly down the plank walk to the house, and I followed them.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXII

OUR RETURN HOME

In October, the most beautiful of all the months, we were obliged to go
back to Fairport. Miss Laura could not bear to leave the farm, and her
face got very sorrowful when any one spoke of her going away. Still, she
had gotten well and strong, and was as brown as a berry, and she said
that she knew she ought to go home, and get back to her lessons.

Mr. Wood called October the golden month. Everything was quiet and
still, and at night and in the morning the sun had a yellow, misty look.
The trees in the orchard were loaded with fruit, and some of the leaves
were floating down, making a soft covering on the ground.

In the garden there were a great many flowers in bloom, in flaming red
and yellow colors. Miss Laura gathered bunches of them every day to put
in the parlor. One day when she was arranging them, she said,
regretfully, "They will soon be gone. I wish it could always be summer."

"You would get tired of it," said Mr. Harry, who had come up softly
behind her. "There's only one place where we could stand perpetual
summer, and that's in heaven."

"Do you suppose that it will always be summer there?" said Miss Laura,
turning around, and looking at him.

"I don't know. I imagine it will be, but I don't think anybody knows
much about it. We've got to wait."

Miss Laura's eyes fell on me. "Harry," she said, "do you think that dumb
animals will go to heaven?"

"I shall have to say again, I don't know," he replied. "Some people hold
that they do. In a Michigan paper, the other day, I came across one
writer's opinion on the subject. He says that among the best people of
all ages have been some who believed in the future life of animals.
Homer and the later Greeks, some of the Romans and early Christians held
this view--the last believing that God sent angels in the shape of birds
to comfort sufferers for the faith. St. Francis called the birds and
beasts his brothers. Dr. Johnson believed in a future life for animals,
as also did Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Jeremy Taylor, Agassiz,
Lamartine, and many Christian scholars. It seems as if they ought to
have some compensation for their terrible sufferings in this world. Then
to go to heaven, animals would only have to take up the thread of their
lives here. Man is a god to the lower creation