figuratively, for his wife has a
most annoying way of dropping in at unexpected hours,--and I am getting
the most charming new clothes made up, so David will think I am
prettier than you. Now don't withdraw the invitation, for I shall come
anyhow."

Carol considered herself well schooled in the art of emotional
restraint, but when she finished reading those blessed words--which to
her ears, so hungry for the voices of home, sounded like an extract
from the beatitudes--she put her head on the back of David's hand and
gulped audibly. And she admitted that she must certainly have cried,
save for the restraining influence of the knowledge that crying made
her nose red.

In the meantime, back in Iowa, the Starrs in their separate households,
were running riot. Never was there to be such a wonderful visit for
anybody in the world. Jerry and Prudence bundled up their family, and
got into a Harmer Six and drove down to Mount Mark, where they
ensconced themselves in the family home and announced their intention
of staying until Connie had gone. As soon as Fairy heard that, she
hastened home too, full of the glad tiding that she had found a boy she
wanted to adopt at last. Lark and Jim neglected the farm shamefully,
and all the women of the neighborhood were busy making endless little
odds and ends of dainty clothing for Carol, who had lived ready-made
during the three years of their domicile in the shadowland of sunshine.

A hurried letter was despatched to David's doctor, asking endless
questions, pledging him to secrecy, and urging him to wire an answer C.
O. D. Little Julia was instructed as to her mother's charms and her
father's virtues far beyond the point of her comprehension. And Jerry
spent long hours with Connie in the car, explaining its mechanism, and
making her a really proficient driver, although she had been very
skilful behind the wheel before. Also, he wrote long letters to his
dealer in Denver, giving him such a host of minute instructions that
the bewildered agent thought the "old gent in Des Moines had gone daft."

Carol wrote every day, pitifully, jubilantly, begging Connie to hurry
and get started, admonishing her to take a complete line of snapshots
of every separate Starr, to count each additional gray hair in darling
father's head, and to locate every separate dimple in Julia's fat
little body. And every letter was answered by every one of the family,
who interrupted themselves to urge ev