ible to buy a home back there. That's my dearest day-dream, and
I'm bound to make it come true if I have to wander around in the
wilderness of hard work as long as the old Israelites did in theirs.
You're to come with me. That's one of the best parts of my dream, for I
know how you've always loved the place and longed to go back. Now, don't
you think that's an object good enough and big enough to let me go for?"

Mrs. Ware seized the little hand spread out over the map of Kentucky and
gave it an impulsive squeeze.

"Yes," she answered. "If you're ever as homesick for the dear old place
as I used to be sometimes, I can understand your longing to go back
there to live."

"_Used_ to be!" echoed Mary blankly, staring at her in astonishment.
"Aren't you now? Wouldn't you be glad to go back there to spend the rest
of your days? I don't mean right now, of course, while Jack and Norman
need you so much here, but"--lowering her voice--"I'm just as sure as I
can be without having been told officially that Jack is going to marry
Betty Lewis as soon as his finances are in better shape. She's such a
perfect darling that they'd be happy ever after, and then I wouldn't
have any compunctions about taking you away from him. Now that's another
reason I don't want to stay on here, just to be an added expense to
him."

The words poured out so impetuously, the face turned toward her was so
eager, that Mrs. Ware could not dim its light by answering the first two
questions as she felt impelled. She answered the last instead, saying
that she felt as Mary did about Jack's marriage, and that it made her
inexpressibly happy to think that the girl he might some day bring home
as his bride was the daughter of her dear old friend and schoolmate,
Joyce Allen.

They lowered their voices over this confidence, so that the woman who
was sitting back to back with them shifted her position and leaned a
little nearer. Even then she could not hear what they were saying till
Mary returned to her first question.

"But, mamma, you said '_used_ to be.' Do you really mean that you don't
care for your Happy Valley as much as you used to? The place you've
talked about to us since we were babies, till we've come to think of it
as enchanted ground?"

Feeling as if she were pleading guilty to a charge of high treason, Mrs.
Ware answered slowly, "No, I can't truthfully say that I do long for it
as I used to. It's this way, little daughter," she added hastily, s