preferred Olney, inasmuch as it was home, he would, if Ethelyn
liked, try Camden for a while. It is true the price of the rooms, which
Melinda casually named, was enormous, but, then, Ethelyn's health and
happiness were above any moneyed consideration; and so, while Mrs.
Markham below made and molded the soda biscuit, and talked about
dreading the hot weather if "Ethelyn was going to be weakly," Aunt
Barbara, and Melinda, and Richard settled a matter which made her eyes
open wide with astonishment when, after the exit of the Joneses and the
doing up of her work, it was revealed to her. Of course, she charged it
all to Aunt Barbara, wishing that good woman as many miles away as
intervened between Olney and Chicopee. Had the young people been going
to keep house, she would have been more reconciled, for in that case
much of what they consumed would have been the product of the farm; but
to board, to take rooms at the Stafford House where Ethelyn would have
nothing in the world to do but to dress and gossip, was abominable. Then
when she heard of the price she opposed the plan with so much energy
that, but for Aunt Barbara and Melinda Jones, Richard might have
succumbed; but the majority ruled, and Ethelyn's eyes grew brighter, and
her thin cheeks rounder, with the sure hope of leaving a place where she
had been so unhappy. She should miss Melinda Jones; and though she would
be near Mrs. Miller, and Marcia Fenton, and Ella Backus, they could not
be to her all Melinda had been, while Andy--Ethelyn felt the lumps
rising in her throat whenever she thought of him and the burst of tears
with which he had heard that she was going away.

"I can't help thinkin' it's for the wuss," he said, wiping his smooth
face with the cuff of his coat-sleeve. "Something will happen as the
result of your goin' there. I feel it in my bones."

Were Andy's words prophetic? Would something happen, if they went to
Camden, which would not have happened had they remained in Olney?
Ethelyn did not ask herself the question. She was too supremely happy,
and if she thought at all, it was of how she could best accelerate her
departure from the lonely farmhouse.

When Mrs. Markham found that they were really going, that nothing she
could say would be of any avail, she gave up the contest, and,
mother-like, set herself at work planning for their comfort, or rather
for Richard's comfort. It was for him that the best and newest
featherbed, weighing thirty pou