ngered a
furtive questioning. Jerry, reveling in her own happiness, did not
realize that her mother was watching her every expression with the
anguishing fear that her Jerry might have changed. And she _had_
changed; she had grown, though she was still as straight as one of
Kettle's young fir trees; her winter's experience had left its mark on
her sunny face in a new firmness of the lips, a thoughtfulness behind
the shining eyes.

"Will these new friends, Jerry, these fine times you have had make you
love Sunnyside less--or be discontented here?" Her mother had
interrupted her flood of confidences to say.

Jerry stared in such astonishment that her mother laughed, a shaky
laugh, and kissed her.

"Because, my dear, remember you are only Jerauld Travis of Kettle
Mountain, and your life must lie just here. Oh, my precious, I thank God
I have you back!" she added with an intensity of emotion that startled
and puzzled Jerry.

"Why, mother, honest truly there's never been a moment when I wasn't
glad I was only Jerauld Travis, and I wouldn't trade places with a soul,
only----" and Jerry could not finish, for she did not know just what she
wanted to say. She was oddly disturbed. Did her mother begrudge her
those happy weeks at Highacres? Had she been afraid of something? And
_was_ she the same Jerry who had wished on the Wishing-rock to just
_see_ the world which lay beyond her mountain? Didn't she want to go
away again--sometime, to college? And what would her mother say if she
told her that?

Jerry managed to lock away these tormenting thoughts while she and the
girls were roaming Kettle. Certainly there was not a shadow in the face
she lifted now to the caress of the mountain breeze nor in the voice
that caroled its "Ka-a-a-a-a" and laughed as the echoes answered.

From the Witches' Glade where the trail sloped down between white
birches, the girls ran fleetly, leaped the little gate through the
fringe of fir trees and, laughing and panting, tumbled upon the veranda
of the bungalow straight into Uncle Johnny's arms!

Uncle Johnny had only stopped at Kettle long enough to unload his girls
and their baggage, then he had hurried on to Boston to consult the
lawyers who were tracing Craig Winton. He had not expected to return for
three or four weeks. "Not until I have this thing off my mind," he had
explained to Isobel and Gyp.

Isobel, though she now looked at it from another angle, still thought it
very foolish to pu