erybody else not to give anything
away, and to be careful what they said. And they all cried over Julia,
and over Carol's letters, and even cried over the beautiful assortment
of clothes they had accumulated for Carol, using Lark as a sewing model.

Twenty minutes after the train left Mount Mark, came a telegram from
Carol: "Did she get off all right? Did anything happen? Wire
immediately." And the whole family rushed off to separate rooms to
weep all over again.

But Aunt Grace walked slowly about the house, gathering up blocks, and
headless dolls, and tailless dogs, and laying them carefully away in a
drawer until little Julia should return to visit the family in Mount
Mark.

For the doctor had said it was all right to restore the baby to her
heart-hungering parents in the mountain land. Carol was fairly strong,
David was fairly well. The baby being healthy, and the parents being
sanitary, the danger to its tiny lungs was minimized,--and by all means
send them the baby.

So Julia was arrayed in matchless garments destined to charm the eyes
of the parents, who, in their happiness, would never realize it had any
clothes on at all, and Connie set out upon her journey with the little
girl in her charge.

On Tuesday morning, Carol was a mental wreck. She forgot to salt
David's eggs, and gave him codeine for his cough instead of tonic
tablets for his appetite. She put no soda in the hot cakes, and made
his egg-nog of buttermilk. She laughed out loud when David was asking
the blessing, and when he wondered how tall Julia was she burst out
crying, and then broke two glasses in her energetic haste to cover up
the emotional outbreak. Altogether it was a most trying morning. She
was ready to meet the train exactly two hours and a half before it was
due, and she combed David's hair three times, and whenever she couldn't
sit still another minute she got up and dusted the railing around the
porch, brushed off his lounging jacket, and rearranged the roses in the
vase on his table.

"David, I honestly believe I was homesick. I didn't know it before. I
got along all right before I knew she was coming, but now I want to
jump up and down and shout. Why on earth didn't she take an earlier
train and save me this agony?"

At last, in self-defense, David insisted that she should start, and,
too impatient to wait for cars and to endure their stopping at every
corner, she walked the two miles to the station, arriving br