just the same, didn't you? And you deserve 'em."

The train on which Dorothy and Jim, together with Ephraim, Aunt
Betty's colored man, were riding, was already speeding through the
broad vales of Maryland, every moment bringing it nearer the city of
Baltimore and Old Bellvieu, the ancestral home of the Calverts, where
Mrs. Elisabeth Cecil Somerset-Calvert, familiarly termed, "Aunt
Betty," would be awaiting them.

Since being "taken into the fold" by Aunt Betty, after years of
living with Mother Martha and Father John, to whom she had sent the
child as a nameless foundling, Dorothy had, indeed, been a happy
girl, as her experiences related in the previous volumes of this
series, "House Party," "In California," "On a Ranch," "House Boat,"
and "At Oak Knowe," will attest.

Just now she was returning from the Canadian school of Oak Knowe,
where she had spent a happy winter. Mrs. Calvert had been unable to
meet her in the Dominion, as she had intended, but had sent Jim and
Ephraim, the latter insisting that he was needed to help care for his
little mistress. Soon after the commencement exercises were over the
trio had left for Dorothy's home.

And such a commencement as it had been! Dorothy could still hear
ringing in her ears the rather solemn, deep-toned words of the Bishop
who conferred the diplomas and prizes, as he had said:

"To Miss Dorothy Calvert for uniform courtesy." Then again: "To Miss
Dorothy Calvert, for advancement in music."

"The dear old Bishop!" she cried, aloud, as she thought again of the
good times she had left behind her.

"'The dear old Bishop'?" Jim repeated, a blank expression on his
face. "And who, please, is the dear old Bishop?"

"I'd forgotten you did not meet him, Jim. He's the head director of
the school at Oak Knowe, and one of the very dearest of men. I shall
never forget my first impression of him--a venerable man, with a
queer-shaped cap on his head, and wearing knee breeches and gaiters,
much as our old Colonial statesmen were wont to do. 'So this is my
old friend, Betty Calvert's child, is it?' he said. Dorothy imitated
the bass tones of a man with such precision that Jim smiled in spite
of himself. 'Well, well! You're as like her as possible--yet only her
great-niece. Ha! Hum!' etc., etc. Then he put his arm around me and
drew me to his side, and, Jim, I can't tell you how comfortable I
felt, for I was inclined to be homesick, 'way up there so far from
Aunt Betty. But he cure