hy not? She's a big girl now, and you don't have to change cars."

"My niece will go home when I do, and not travel alone; and if I can't
wait here for her, in the house that used to be her mother's and my
sister's home, I'll go and board somewhere," returned Rebecca with
warmth.

"Oh, you can stay here as long as you want to. You're welcome," said
Mrs. Dent.

Then Rebecca started. "There she is!" she declared in a trembling,
exultant voice. Nobody knew how she longed to see the girl.

"She isn't as late as I thought she'd be," said Mrs. Dent, and again
that curious, subtle change passed over her face, and again it settled
into that stony impassiveness.

Rebecca stared at the door, waiting for it to open. "Where is she?"
she asked presently.

"I guess she's stopped to take off her hat in the entry," suggested
Mrs. Dent.

Rebecca waited. "Why don't she come? It can't take her all this time
to take off her hat."

For answer Mrs. Dent rose with a stiff jerk and threw open the door.

"Agnes!" she called. "Agnes!" Then she turned and eyed Rebecca. "She
ain't there."

"I saw her pass the window," said Rebecca in bewilderment.

"You must have been mistaken."

"I know I did," persisted Rebecca.

"You couldn't have."

"I did. I saw first a shadow go over the ceiling, then I saw her in
the glass there"--she pointed to a mirror over the sideboard
opposite--"and then the shadow passed the window."

"How did she look in the glass?"

"Little and light-haired, with the light hair kind of tossing over her
forehead."

"You couldn't have seen her."

"Was that like Agnes?"

"Like enough; but of course you didn't see her. You've been thinking
so much about her that you thought you did."

"You thought YOU did."

"I thought I saw a shadow pass the window, but I must have been
mistaken. She didn't come in, or we would have seen her before now. I
knew it was too early for her to get home from Addie Slocum's, anyhow."

When Rebecca went to bed Agnes had not returned. Rebecca had resolved
that she would not retire until the girl came, but she was very tired,
and she reasoned with herself that she was foolish. Besides, Mrs. Dent
suggested that Agnes might go to the church social with Addie Slocum.
When Rebecca suggested that she be sent for and told that her aunt had
come, Mrs. Dent laughed meaningly.

"I guess you'll find out that a young girl ain't so ready to leave a
sociable, where there's boys, t