ear. The change has done
you good."

"And it didn't turn out a stupid--half-way affair, after all," Hilary
declared. "I've had a lovely time. Only, I simply had to come home, I
felt somehow--that--that--"

"We were expecting company?" Pauline laughed. "And you wanted to be
here?"

"I reckon that was it," Hilary agreed. As she sat there, resting a
moment, before going up-stairs, she hardly seemed the same girl who had
gone away so reluctantly only eight days before. The change of scene,
the outdoor life, the new friendship, bringing with it new interests,
had worked wonders,

"And now," Pauline suggested, taking up her sister's valise, "perhaps
you would like to go up to your room--visitors generally do."

"To rest after your journey, you know," Patience prompted. Patience
believed in playing one's part down to the minutest detail.

"Thank you," Hilary answered, with quite the proper note of formality
in her voice, "if you don't mind; though I did not find the trip as
fatiguing as I had expected."

But from the door, she turned back to give her mother a second and most
uncompany-like hug. "It is good to be home, Mother Shaw! And please,
you don't want to pack me off again anywhere right away--at least, all
by myself?"

"Not right away," her mother answered, kissing her.

"I guess you will think it is good to be home, when you
know--everything," Patience announced, accompanying her sisters
up-stairs, but on the outside of the banisters.

"Patty!" Pauline protested laughingly--"Was there ever such a child for
letting things out!"

"I haven't!" the child exclaimed, "only now--it can't make any
difference."

"There is mystery in the very air!" Hilary insisted. "Oh, what have
you all been up to?"

"You're not to go in there!" Patience cried, as Hilary stopped before
the door of her own and Pauline's room.

"Of course you're not," Pauline told her. "It strikes me, for
company--you're making yourself very much at home! Walking into
peoples' rooms." She led the way along the hall to the spare room,
throwing the door wide open.

"Oh!" Hilary cried, then stood quite still on the threshold, looking
about her with wide, wondering eyes.

The spare room was grim and gray no longer. Hilary felt as if she must
be in some strange, delightful dream. The cool green of the wall
paper, with the soft touch of pink in ceiling and border, the fresh
white matting, the cozy corner opposite--with its delicate