them.

So, on the morning of that day, a cab drove up to the dingy house in
Fort Street, and Miss Patch, and her eight parcels, and her rosebush
was conveyed to the station in state and comfort, and between Jessie
and Miss Grace and Tom she was taken to the railway carriage and
comfortably ensconced in a corner without any bother as to luggage or
ticket-taking or anything.

In fact, she was so excited and bewildered that she quite forgot all
about everything. "Well!" she exclaimed, as the train moved off into
the strange new country, "I never knew before how delightful and easy
travelling could be! It makes me smile now to think how I shrank
from it, and the fuss I made!"

Jessie, who was still weeping silently after the parting with her
mother and Tom Salter, looked up and smiled sympathetically.
The bustle and responsibility of taking care of Miss Patch had helped
them all through the last sad leave-takings, but when that strain was
over, and they were comfortably settled, and Tom came up to say his
last shy good-bye, the realization rushed over her that she should
never see the dingy grey house again, nor her stepmother, nor Tom--
good, kind, faithful Tom--and it was with tears running down her face
that she threw her arms round the good fellow's neck, and kissed him
as though he were her own kind big brother. Then, subsiding into her
corner sobbing, she left London in grief nearly as great as when she
had arrived there two years before.

For a long time her thoughts lingered about the home and the life she
was leaving, her mother, Charlie, her father, the house, the lodgers,
the dingy street, the noise and bustle. How real it all seemed, yet
already how far away! Could she ever have been in the midst of it
with no thought of ever knowing anything else! How strange life was,
and how wonderful! How one short month had changed everything!
Here she was, her dream and her longing realized, going home again to
Springbrook, to the old happy life, the same friends, the same
everything--yet, no, not quite the same, never quite the same,
perhaps. She herself was changed, and--she looked at Miss Patch.
Their eyes met in a happy, affectionate smile. "No, things were not
quite the same, they were better, if anything. She had more now,
more in every way."

The train tore on, and the day wore on. The hedges were growing bare
now, and the leaves on them were turning red and yellow and brown;
but the autumn sun sh