quired, surprised.

"Take this seat and find out, Little Miss Why," Blue Bonnet retorted
with an effort. "Maybe you haven't as much regard for your tongue as I
have. I want to keep mine whole."

The low, rambling farmhouse surrounded by green hills and ancient oaks,
with cattle grazing peacefully on the gentle slopes, and the farm dog
yelping frantically at the big gates, gave Blue Bonnet the worst pang of
homesickness she had felt since she left the ranch.

Wreaths of blue smoke curled upward lazily from the kitchen chimney, and
from the dooryard came the most tantalizing odors of chicken frying,
coffee boiling, and fresh doughnuts.

Blue Bonnet jumped from the wagon and filled her lungs with the
delicious fragrance.

"Girls," she cried, "just smell! It's chicken and coffee and--"

"Doughnuts," Amanda finished with rapture. "Wait until you taste them!
Aunt Priscilla is a wonder at cooking. She has the best things you ever
ate in your life."

Aunt Priscilla appeared in the doorway at that moment, a wholesome
sweet-faced woman of middle age, and took the girls in to the spare
bedroom to lay off their things and wash before supper.

Blue Bonnet took off her cap and sweater and laid them lightly on the
high feather bed with its wonderful patch-work quilt--the "rising sun"
pattern running riot through it.

"It's so clean I hate to muss it up with my things," she said, casting
about for a chair.

"I speak for this bed," Kitty said, depositing her things carelessly. "I
slept in it the last time we came. It's as good as a toboggan. You keep
going down and down and--"

"We're going to draw for it," Amanda announced from the wash-stand where
she was wrestling with Debby's mud. "It will hold four; the other three
girls will have to go in the next room."

"Why couldn't we bring the other bed in here--I mean the springs and
mattress?" Debby suggested. "Do you think your aunt would care, Amanda?"

Amanda volunteered to ask.

Blue Bonnet took her turn at the wash basin and then wandered into the
parlor. She looked about wonderingly. Family portraits done in crayon
adorned the walls. A queer little piano, short half an octave, occupied
one corner of the room, a marble-topped table, the other. A plush
photograph album, a Bible and a copy of Pilgrim's Progress lay on the
table. The carpet was green, bold with red roses; roses so vivid in
coloring that they seemed to vie with the scarlet geraniums that filled
the south