"Yes. I hope then that they are more quiet than most boys," remarked Miss Bradbury. "I shall put my bonnet here, and my coat over the back of that chair. It is not so cold. I wore my medium weight coat; there are signs of spring—time for it, middle of March!" She spoke in crisp, curt sentences as if not to waste a word. The boys looked at her, and wondered that Happie had said she half feared her. They saw a tall woman, perhaps two or three years past sixty. Her eyes were keen, but humorous, her ample mouth was decidedly firm, but not unamiable. Her nose was the nose of an aristocrat, and her garments, though remote from so much as an approach to fashion, were of the best materials, worn with a carelessness that betokened them interesting only for their usefulness to the wearer. Eccentric Miss Bradbury was stern, perhaps, but kind, and rather a fine lady in her queer way.

"Do you know why I came?" asked the visitor turning from the bed where she had laid her bonnet, and giving two rapid strokes to her hair without a glance at the mirror.

"Because you wanted to see us, we hope?" suggested Margery with her gentle smile.

"Obviously. Never make smooth, meaningless speeches, Margaret," said Miss Bradbury. "I came, however, rather more because I felt that you wanted to see me. When I feel a drawing to certain people, as if I were being called to them across the space dividing us, I know those people need me. It has happened to me at various times in my life, and never has led me wrong. Last night I felt that I was called here; here I am. That may sound to you young people like great nonsense, but Keren-happuch Bradbury is not given to nonsense, and she is convinced that she is right in this matter."

"I don't see why not, since we know that there is such a thing as wireless telegraphy," observed Ralph from his perch, whence he had been too much interested to remember to descend.

"That's a very sensible remark, my boy, though you look anything but sensible roosting on that step-ladder in that anthropological manner," said Miss Bradbury with a twinkle.

"You don't mean that we are going to need you for—well, that there is any trouble coming, Aunt Keren?" said Happie, her mind reverting to her mother's tired face.

"I am not prophesying; I am visiting, Happie," retorted Miss Bradbury. "I have no idea why I am here, but here I am, and that because I felt sure that you needed me. Better let me get luncheon, and send these boys home while you finish your work, children. If you came to rescue Penelope from the top of the wardrobe, there is no reason why you should wait for her to crawl up again, Master Ralph Gordon."

Ralph unwound himself and began to come down on this strong hint, but he was not offended; on the contrary he liked this queer person who would guard his young girl neighbors like a dragon, as he plainly saw.

As Ralph stood erect and folded his step-ladder the bell rang once more, this time with a startling peal, and, as Margery ran to the speaking-tube and to press the button in the kitchen, Laura's voice was heard screaming in the outer hall: "Oh, open the door, open the door quick!" and she rattled the knob frantically.

"What is it, what has happened?" cried Happie, catching the little girl as she half fell over the threshold when she opened the door.

"Mama, oh, poor, poor mama!" wailed Laura, clutching at Happie.

"What?" gasped Happie, turning so white that Ralph sprang to help her.

"She has been sent home in a carriage. Oh, oh, I came along just in time to see her. I ran up when the man rang the bell," moaned Laura.

Miss Bradbury came forward with a kind of collected haste. "Laura," she said sternly, "stop your hysterics. I have no patience with hysterics. As though there were anything dreadful about being sent home in a carriage! Ralph, come with me. We will go down and help Mrs. Scollard up-stairs."

Ralph Gordon brushed past the frightened Scollard girls, and followed Miss Bradbury instantly. When they returned it was very slowly, and the janitor of the house, with a stranger who had been passing, was helping them. They were carrying Mrs. Scollard, and Margery and Happie clutched each other, and Laura ran away to hide, fearing to look.

Their mother's face was ashen, and her eyes were closed. Polly began to cry, and Penny fled to Snigs for comfort; for the first time in her life her sisters were not equal to giving it.

"This way," said Miss Bradbury leading. The men laid Mrs. Scollard on her own bed, and withdrew.

Her eyes fluttered and opened. "Don't be frightened, children," she said. "I'm only tired."

"What doctor shall I fetch?" asked Ralph. "And isn't there something Snigs could get from the drug store in the meantime?"

"Yes. Go for—who, Margery?" asked Miss Bradbury.

"Doctor Revel on the corner is the nearest," said Margery, so frightened her lips would hardly form the words.

"Happie, heat milk," ordered Miss Bradbury. "Yes, go for that doctor, boy; hasten. I suppose we must not prescribe, but I think it's pure exhaustion."

"Mother put away some of that old wine which you sent her for Christmas, Aunt Keren. She said it must be kept for sickness. Isn't that best now?" asked Happie.

"Old port! The very thing! Get it. I'm glad to see you have self-control, Happie," her godmother smiled at her approvingly as she spoke. "I am going to make Laura behave herself and look after Polly and Penny. Then we will undress your mother and make her comfortable."

She stalked grimly away with a look that promised scant allowance for Laura's twelve years. Miss Bradbury was the sort of woman that expected every child, as well as "every man to do his duty," thus outstripping England as interpreted by Nelson.

By some means she succeeded in dominating Laura, and the two younger children's voices hushed, as Laura took them in hand.

Then this efficient woman who had come so opportunely to the frightened tenants of the Patty-Pans, returned to get Mrs. Scollard comfortably in bed, where she lay with closed eyes when Ralph returned with the doctor.

"You've been a good and useful boy; I thoroughly approve of you," said Miss Bradbury, and somehow Ralph felt as if he had been brevetted. Miss Keren-happuch was such a strong character that her commendation carried with it the conviction of a genuine gain.

The Gordon boys slipped away to their own apartment across the hall. Margery and Happie waited anxiously, holding each other fast, while the doctor examined his patient.

"No disease; pure exhaustion, but that is quite enough," he said, coming out through the sliding door to the waiting girls. "She has been spurring herself on for months; the worn nerves can go no further. She must have complete rest and good nursing for a year, perhaps; certainly for a long time. Then I can promise that she will be perfectly restored. It is nothing serious, nothing to be alarmed about, I assure you."

The doctor bowed himself out, and Miss Bradbury attended him to the door.

Margery and Happie stood silently watching him go, each occupied with the same thought. Nothing serious? When the promise that their mother should be restored if she took the needed rest held the implication that she would never be well without it! And when there was no money but what she had earned, earned at the price of this breakdown! Nothing serious! Why, nothing could be more serious, as this beloved mother's young daughters realized with the hand of this, their first acquaintance with real sorrow, heavily gripping their hearts.

CHAPTER IV
AN ANGEL IN DISGUISE

"It's rather worse to be ill with nothing the matter than to be sensibly ill of a disease," said poor Mrs. Scollard speaking feebly, but with an attempt at her own cheerfulness.

She had been ill for three weeks, and had not improved perceptibly over her condition in the beginning. "Only a nervous collapse," the doctor repeated. It had been so long coming on that the recovery must be proportionately long. And how could she get better with the thought that when her strength had given out, the family income had ceased sitting like a vulture at her bedside? Small as was the rent of the "Patty-Pans," still it must be paid. A month was as long as she could be idle, yet that month was nearly past, and she was no better.

Margery, Bob and Happie for the first time realized what a vitally real thing money is, and vainly strove to find a way to take their mother's place as the bread-winners. They understood only too clearly that there was no chance for that dear mother to get well while she lay in the second Patty-Pan room with anxiety tearing at her heart-strings.

Ralph and Snigs and their fine mother were comforts in those black days, but it was on Miss Bradbury that the Scollards found themselves relying with hourly increasing appreciation of her strength. That remarkable woman had not suggested returning to her home, but nightly occupied the parlor couch in the Patty-Pans, and daily took charge of its sorrowful tenants. Delicacies such as Margery would not have dared to buy found their way to Mrs. Scollard, and Margery discovered when she went to market that there were no out-standing accounts such as she had been dreading with the neighboring tradesmen; Miss Keren-happuch paid as she went out of her own purse, which the Scollard girls had always believed to be not over-abounding.

"Over-doing in work is not likely to lead to under-doing a breakdown," Miss Bradbury replied to Mrs. Scollard's remark. "Nature is an excellent accountant, and knows how to collect her dues. I think I should be satisfied with what ails you, if I were you, Charlotte."

She altered the position of Mrs. Scollard's pillows and smoothed them with a touch singularly gentle in such an energetic person, and beckoned Margery to follow her into the dining-room. Laura sat here in an attitude of despair, her feet stuck straight out before her indifferently to the size of the room, her arms hanging over the back of her chair. Bob and Happie were trying to occupy themselves with the lessons which their mother would have required had she been well, and serene little Polly sat rocking her doll, she the more sleepy of the two, though the doll's eyes did droop with the motion of the rocking-chair.

Miss Bradbury took the chair which Polly had occupied when the little girl yielded it up on her entrance, and gathered Polly into her lap, who in turn still held Phyllis Lovelocks tight.

"Now, my dears," began Miss Keren-happuch in her businesslike way that covered so much tenderness, "you all look dreadfully worried. You must not; your mother will get well after she gets to the country."

"Why, Aunt Keren!" exclaimed Happie reproachfully. "When you know she can't even afford to stay in the city!"

"Which is the reason that she is going to my farm, that, and the fact that she must have fresh air and quiet," said Miss Keren-happuch.

"Your farm!" exclaimed all the children together.

"Yes; in Pennsylvania," said Miss Bradbury calmly. "I have never seen it, and I doubt strongly that I shall be particularly pleased with the sight. But a farm it is, of some seventy acres, up in the mountains, and there is where we are going in two weeks."

"We don't understand," cried Bob, after he had exchanged excited and bewildered glances with the others.

"There is nothing more to understand," declared Miss Bradbury. "Polly, your doll's arm will break off if you don't turn it around. Your mother must rest, there is no money to provide that rest, I must go to the country somewhere, so instead of boarding this summer, I am going to open that house of mine, which I have never seen, and you children are going to keep house for your mother and me indefinitely. It's not in the least difficult nor mysterious."

"You trump!" cried Bob with an enthusiasm that prevented any suspicion of disrespect.

"I heard a boy say lately that he would not live in the country for anything," observed Miss Bradbury with her twinkle.

"But to save his mother, and when he didn't know how he could live anywhere!" cried Bob.

"You dear, dear, blessed Aunt Keren!" cried Happie, throwing herself upon her adopted relative with an abandon which, under ordinary circumstances that lady would have disapproved.

"There, there! I suppose it is a relief," she said patting Happie's back. "But I warn you that it will not be at all attractive, probably. I took it for a debt, and my debtor said afterwards, so I am told, that it was cheaper to give it to me than to keep it. I suspect that he pretended not to be able to pay me in money in order to get rid of this farm. So you may be prepared for going into the wilderness. However, it will be a wilderness of pure air and great altitude, and we can exist somehow. It will undoubtedly build up poor Charlotte."

"I am going to like it," Happie declared. "I learned to like tomatoes, and I thought that in all this world I could never taste them a second time. And I love olives now, but when I first tried one, I really had to rush away from the table. So I am going to love that farm no matter what it is. How could we help loving a place that cured motherkins?"

"Aunt Keren, you are an angel in disguise," announced Laura solemnly.

"I must admit the disguise," retorted Miss Bradbury. "Now, children, I want you to get ready to go out of town in two weeks from now. Can you do it?"

"Yes, but we have a lease of the Patty-Pans; we shall have to sub-let it," said Margery, with the tiny anxious line appearing in her forehead.

"Furnished," supplemented Miss Bradbury. "I shall send up all the furniture necessary. There is some furniture there; I don't know how much, nor how good."

"Nobody has told you what we think of your giving up your comfortable summer in the White Mountains and down in Maine, without a care, and going up to this farm in order to cure dear mother, and to help us," said Margery, with a quiver in her voice.

"Nonsense!" cried Miss Keren-happuch briskly. "Every landed proprietor should look after his estate. It is high time that I saw mine. I shall enjoy the novelty of the situation. For the rest, Margaret, I have a very real affection for your mother, and a profound respect for the way that she has fought her good fight for you orphaned children. There is more than you know in my feeling for Charlotte; your grandmother and I were not ordinary friends. I should not do less than my best for her daughter, even if I were not as fond of her as I am. So there is nothing more to be said on that head."

"We will call the farm 'the Ark,'" said Happie. "It will be our refuge in this flood of affliction."

"It's not a particularly original name, Hapsie," remarked Bob. "I think lots of houses have been called the Ark, but it fits this case to a T. I don't suppose there's any doubt that we should not have had a place in which to lay our heads if it had not been for Aunt Keren and her farm."

A knocking at the dumb waiter door warned the Scollards that Ralph and Snigs wanted to be admitted; they had adopted this substitute for the bell not to disturb Mrs. Scollard. Polly slipped down from Miss Bradbury's lap and ran to open the door to them.

"Boys, what do you think?" cried Happie the moment they entered. "We are going away!"

The Gordons had known all the troubles, the anxieties that threatened to engulf their neighbors, and had shared their despondency over a prospect that held no hope. They stopped short, looking hardly less excited than the family group.

"What do you mean?" Ralph cried.

"Going away with blessed Aunt Keren to a farm she owns in Pennsylvania," Happie said. "It will save mother's life—and you know what else it will do, Ralph. We are going to try to sub-let the Patty-Pans furnished, so it won't be good-bye forever to you."

"And my mother wants to find another flat!" cried Snigs, getting very red in the effort to speak fast enough. "There are some college boys from the South want to stay in New York all summer. She wants to rent another flat and take them with her. She was saying to-night she might move if she could not get one in this house. Mayn't we have yours?"

"Now, did you ever in all your life?" demanded Happie of the world at large. And the world at large, in the person of Margery, Bob and Laura, replied that it never did! Even Miss Bradbury seemed elated over this remarkable coincidence of need and supply on both sides.

"Come on over and tell mother about it!" said Snigs, seizing Bob's arm, and gesticulating wildly to Margery and Happie, while plunging towards the door as if he feared the escape of the Patty-Pans or of his mother, unless they were at once permanently secured to each other.

"Go, if you like," Miss Bradbury supplemented. "I think I will unfold my plan to your mother this moment. The rule is not to talk to a nervous invalid at night, but I suspect that she is more sleepless now from worry than she will be from excitement over a prospect which, though not brilliant, at least holds a solution of her troubles."

The oldest Scollards having departed with and to their neighbors, Miss Keren-happuch went into their mother's room, and seated herself on the edge of the bed with an air of such resolution that the sick woman humorously wondered whether she had come to amputate or to execute.

"You are to be deported, Charlotte," she announced decidedly.

"Deported? Why and whence?" asked Mrs. Scollard.

"For precisely the same reason that the authorities always deport—because you are not fit to stay," replied Miss Bradbury. "We are going to spend the summer on my Pennsylvania farm, your family and myself."

"I didn't know you had a farm," gasped Mrs. Scollard, catching at the first thing that occurred to her to say, overwhelmed with the magnitude of the announcement.

"Neither did I, fully, until to-day," said Miss Bradbury. "I have never seen it, but I believe it will shelter us. As soon as you are able to move we are going, and our return is most indefinite. You are going to sub-let the Patty-Pans, furnished, and the girls are to keep house for us while we enjoy ourselves without a care upon our minds."

"Dear, dear Miss Keren!" sobbed Mrs. Scollard with the ready tears of nervous prostration. "How good you are! But do you think I could let you take my place, and support all my family for several months?"

"Nonsense, Charlotte! I shall save money. My summers cost me not less than three hundred dollars always, junketing around from hotel to hotel, from the seashore to the mountains. We won't spend three hundred dollars up there, not all of us put together, if I know anything about an isolated farm. And I really ought to look after my property. What do I get out of the sort of summers I usually spend? Weariness and vexation of spirit! Dress three times a day, not a solitary spot that isn't humming with summer voices! When I want to sit down and hear the waves, or to read, I have to hear a lot of empty-headed women telling one another about their servants' misdeeds, or how the tailor spoiled a coat, or—worst of all—how seriously they doubt the wisdom of speaking to some of the other women, one of whom is too quiet to be a desirable acquaintance, and the other too gay to know! And all the long golden summer days they sit on the piazza and make hideous, useless things out of pretty materials! It is nothing to regret that I may spend one summer on my own probably worthless estate, in dignified seclusion. Whether or not, we are going. I did not come to consult you, but to announce it. So go to sleep. For half a year you are to have a vacation where, at the worst, you will be two thousand feet above tide water, and must get strong, knowing the children are safe, and you are secure, breathing good air, even if there is little else to live on. Go to sleep, Charlotte, and stop worrying, because I want you to get strong enough to go at once. Since I have remembered my farm, I am all youthful impatience to see it."

Good Miss Keren-happuch arose with a jerk, intending to stalk out of the room, but Mrs. Scollard sprang up and caught her around the neck. "You dear, you dear! I can't thank you!" she sobbed.

"I don't remember suggesting that you should," said Miss Keren gruffly. But the kiss with which she laid her old friend's daughter back upon the pillow was very tender.

Mrs. Gordon was delighted with the opportunity to take the Patty-Pans and its furniture; it fitted her plans to obtain it quite as well as it worked for the Scollards to have her assume it. Before any one had time to realize what had happened, energetic Miss Bradbury had set Margery and Happie at their preparations for departure, and going away had become a definite fact.

It seemed a little formidable to the three eldest children, now that the plan had taken on definiteness. Mrs. Scollard was about again, proving that if one can find the way to minister to a mind diseased, strength attends on such ministration, but she was still so weak and pale that Margery could hardly look at her without tears. She tried hard to be brave, but she dreaded leaving behind her the only life that she had known, to go away into an untried life among new surroundings.

More than any of the other children, Happie had a cat-like love of place, and to her it was very hard to go away from New York with uncertainty in her mind as to how or when she could return to it.

"I suppose I shall go around wailing and gnashing my teeth, Bob," she confided to her brother. But Bob knew her, and her ability to make the best of something that was not merely a bad bargain, but no bargain at all.

"Not you, Hapsie!" he said. "You will find a dozen good reasons for preferring that farm to any other spot on earth, no matter if it turns out as bad as Martin Chuzzlewit's Eden."

"That's not a bad testimony to the fitness of your nickname, Happie," smiled Margery.

Laura openly gave way to grief, which she carefully fostered in herself, for Laura loved the rôle of martyr as well as Happie loved to be sunny.

It troubled Mrs. Scollard sorely to see Laura's sorrow until she took to singing Schubert's "Adieu," as a suitable expression of her woe, then her mother smiled at the sentimental little girl, justly concluding that sentimental grief was not dangerously deep.

Jeunesse Dorée was to accompany his family as a matter of course, though the old colored woman who came to clean for them held up her hands in horror at the suggestion.

"You sholy won't have luck if you takes him," she groaned. "'Twan't never reckoned right where I come fum to move a cat, and I just begs an' prays you let him run. It's bad nuff ter see you goin', let 'lone wif a cat."

"We think it would be very bad luck to be deprived of Dorée," smiled Mrs. Scollard. "And surely, Amanda, some sort of punishment ought to fall on those who would turn a petted creature into the street to starvation and ill-treatment! I think I'd rather risk the effect of taking him."

"Bob has bought a beautiful strong basket for him," said Happie applauding her mother's sentiments with a bright smile as she went through the Patty-Pans parlor.

She found Laura with Polly in the chamber which they shared, Polly watching her elder with a face expressive of puzzled awe, tempered by amusement. Penny was lost in the labor of packing the animals into a large Noah's ark, and losing her patience with the bulk of elephants and flies—which really did not differ materially—and with unruly legs and horns which got continually entangled.

"Bob says," the mite was remarking, "we's all going to live in a nark, an' for me to get you nanimals all back 'gain 'fore ve flood. If you don't swallow you' horns, you foolsish mooly cow, you, I'll make you sail on ve roof, and vhen you'll see!"

"Leave the ducks and geese out to swim, Penny mine, and you'll have more room," suggested Happie. "Let Happie coax the cow to draw in her horns. There, you see what good it does to pat her and to speak to her gently? She's in. What are you doing, Laura?"

Laura looked up, raised her eyebrows, and sighed with her grown-up air, but she did not answer.

"She says she's going to put all her pretty things in a box and mark it for me when I'm twelve, going on thirteen," said Polly answering for her. "She says she's sure she'll never live to use 'em. Now, isn't that silly? Because farms are healthy, I thought!"

Happie laughed. "Oh, Laura," she cried, "how can you be such a goose? I wouldn't count on getting those treasures if I were you, Polly. I think Laura may live to use them."

Laura regarded Happie with serene superiority. "Grief often kills," she said with the brevity of a tragic poet. "I'm sure I shall pine away. Do you know what nostalgia means?"

Again Happie laughed out merrily. "No; do you?" she said.

"It means homesickness," replied Laura with crushing dignity. "I found the word in a book of poetry and I looked it up, because I knew it must mean something lovely and sad. I made a song without words about it; it goes this way." And Laura hummed a line of music that was more minor than any known key seemed able to represent.

"Isn't that perfectly be-au-ti-ful?" she demanded. "Doesn't that sound just like nostalgia? That may be my last composition; it will be if this move kills me, as I 'most know it will. Wouldn't you feel sure that meant some one dying of homesickness if you heard it, and no one told you?"

"What a queer thing you are, Laura!" exclaimed Happie, half impressed, though she could never keep a respectfully straight face over Laura's performances. "I can't tell whether it sounds like nos—what-you-call-it or not, because I never heard the word before, so I haven't had time to know it set to music, but I don't think I should know that tune meant homesickness. It sounds to me like the wail of the washerwoman who got too much blueing in the clothes—it's the bluest thing I ever heard."

"You haven't one bit of—of anything in you, Happie," said Laura turning away pettishly.

Bob came in, his arms full of half-discarded boyish treasures. "Say, what do you think, Hap; will there be room for this stuff?" he demanded. "I could give it up, but I'd just as lief keep it. You see it won't be our house."

"Still there must be room for everything, since it's a farm, and we have a freight car to ourselves. I'd keep it," said Happie with the understanding she could not give Laura.

"I guess I asked you instead of Margery because I wanted that advice, and I knew you'd give it—she thinks I clutter," said Bob. "Are you going to take all your own Lares and Penates?"

"What it is to have a classical education!" exclaimed Happie in mock admiration. "No; we are only going to take our Laura and Penelope." And she swooped down to snatch a refreshing kiss from the pink and white baby, and to rescue a particularly spotted dog from having his exceedingly curled-up tail shut in the cover of the Noah's ark.

At last all the preparations were completed, the Patty-Pans flat was shining and fleckless, everything in apple-pie order to be relinquished to Mrs. Gordon's care. Ralph and Snigs were inconsolable over the approaching parting until Miss Bradbury hinted her intention of asking them to follow the exiles sometime during the summer, when they plucked up heart and began to plan for meeting on the farm.

It was a cold, raw day in April, a day left over from March getting used up in April, a most dreary and uncomfortable day on which to set forth upon a journey with an invalid to migrate from the city to the country, and to a house the comfort of which there was good reason to doubt.

The Gordon boys went to the station and pressed upon their friends, in parting, bulky packages of almost any possibilities. They shook hands with emotion, and the Scollard party sank into its seats silently with a suspicious redness about other lashes than Laura's, though everybody made heroic efforts to appear cheerful, and not ungrateful for Miss Bradbury's kindness. The only way to succeed in this effort was to keep constantly in view the good that was to be done the dear mother.

The warmth of the train was welcome. Poor Mrs. Scollard sank into the corner of her chair hardly able to endure the neuralgia which had added itself to her weakness, glad of the friendly steam pipes.

The train pulled slowly out of the station, and steamed, with increasing speed across the plains of Jersey towards the distant hills.

No one spoke for some time. Then Happie aroused herself. "I wonder if the farm has good cherry-trees," she said.

Bob laughed. "Already, Happie?" he said. "I thought it would take longer than this for even your barometer to indicate clearing."

Happie smiled a feeble smile. "I'm afraid I don't much care whether it has or not," she said. "I just happened to think of it."

"Don't apologize," returned Bob. "It's a comfort to have you beginning to sit up and take notice."

Jeunesse Dorée purred when one of the children peeped into his basket, according to his cheerful habit of responding with a song to any notice.

After a time the landscape arose from the dull level of its beginnings and began to put on beauty. The hills were showing their heads in the distance, with blue vaporous lights playing over them in the pale sunshine of the chill afternoon.

On they steamed, the grade perceptibly higher, until all the young folk were looking out of the windows, enjoying the barren beauty of the mountains in the early spring. Mrs. Scollard felt the benediction of space and quiet, her throbbing nerves grew more still as her eyes sought the horizon with the delight this beauty-loving woman always found in nature.

Miss Bradbury sat preternaturally stiff and straight looking at the scene, which was as new to her as to any of the others, with the approval of a proprietor.

"It's pretty here!" cried Polly, as the train rounded a curve. As she spoke the travelers felt its motion retard. It stopped, and the guard called out: "Crestville!" They had arrived.

CHAPTER V
TAKING POSSESSION

Crestville had no public carriages, or "if it had," Happie said, "it kept them very private." Miss Bradbury, and what Bob called "her personally conducted party," walked around the platform of the little red station, discovering nothing but an open wagon to which were attached two sorry-looking horses with drooping heads and tails, a wagon which could not possibly be construed as intended to carry passengers.

A road ran past the station, crossing the track and continuing its muddy way up the hill, losing itself under the bare trees. The mud was disheartening, the silence oppressive. Mrs. Scollard, weak and tired, caught her breath in an arrested sob, feeling that with the dying echoes of the train had died away also the last echoes of civilization.

"Is there any one here who will take us to the Bittenbender farm?" Miss Bradbury asked the station-master.

"That's owned by a city woman now," remarked that worthy reflectively.

"Yes, I own it. How shall I get there?" said Miss Bradbury.

"I heard she'd got some one here to open it up for her," said the station-master.

"Yes; I wrote Mrs. Shafer to see that the place was aired and cleaned; we've come up for the summer. Can you tell me how to get my friends over there?" insisted Miss Bradbury, divided in mind between annoyance and amusement.

"The widow Shafer's got rheumatism too bad to clean anything, her own house even, leave alone yours," said the station-master. "She couldn't open up."

"What did she do then? Why didn't she write me that she couldn't attend to it?" demanded Miss Bradbury, aghast at the prospect of taking her flock into a damp, chilly, uncleaned house.

"Left it go," replied the station-master to her first question. "I guess she was talking of writing, but her hands hain't much good—they're stiff."

"Well, you haven't told me who I can get to take us over," Miss Bradbury reminded him, abandoning the subject of the widow.

"There hain't nobody," replied the station-master succinctly.

The owner of the wagon and the discouraged horses had come forth from the freight end of the station at the beginning of this conversation to which he had attended with rapt attention, his jaws slowly moving up and down as he leaned forward, elbows on knees on the cart seat which he had ascended.

"You couldn't come back after her, Jake?" suggested the station-master turning to him.

The man shook his head. "Goin' after a load," he said, not specifying of what. "Mebbe I could send Pete Kuntz back after her; his hosses hain't haulin'."

"Pete couldn't take 'em all—two, four, eight of 'em," said the station-master reflectively. "He couldn't come back after another load, neither; 'twould make it too late. That's a bad road up along past Eli's, before you come to the Bittenbender place. If I was you, livin' up that way, I'd see if I couldn't git the road overseer to work that road. I declare I'd ruther come down with my team and work it myself, if I wuz you, even if 'twan't part of my reg'lar road tax, before I'd ride it as 'tis."

"That overseer hain't worth nothin'," declared the driver. "I wisht George Lieder had got it—I'd er voted fer him, I would, if they'd er put him up."

"Don't you think there's any way that this Pete you spoke of could get us over?" interrupted Miss Bradbury. "And wouldn't it be better to decide on something soon? It grows dark early, and my friend is ill."

"Well, I guess!" said the man on the wagon. "There'd be nine of you with Pete. Say, I never thought! Pete might go up an' git my three seated hack wagon, an' take 'em all to oncet, usin' his team. Say, wouldn't that fix it, Jimmy?"

"I guess," assented the station-master.

"And what about the trunks?" suggested Miss Bradbury, indicating the generous pile that adorned the platform. "We must have some of them to-night."

"Well, if you was to make it worth my while I'd do my haulin' to-morrer, an' take them there trunks up fer you," said the driver.

"What do you ask?" inquired Miss Bradbury, inwardly resolved to meet any demand.

"Guess I'd have to charge you a dollar and a-half," said the man, eyeing Miss Bradbury dubiously out of the shadow of his very long nose.

Miss Bradbury gave a soft chuckle, though her face remained grave. She glanced at the six trunks which had come with them and said: "That's a bargain."

"Couldn't Bob and I ride over with him, Aunt Keren?" asked Happie.

"I'm afraid it would prove a springless and tiresome drive, Happie," said Miss Keren. "But I've no other objection, if your friend here has none—Mr.—Mr.——"

"Shale, Jake Shale," supplemented the man. "I don't mind; I kinder like comp'ny."

He loaded the trunks on his wagon, and Happie clambered up beside him, while Bob adorned the top of the smallest trunk.

"I hope you will send this Pete after us soon," said Miss Bradbury as she saw Mrs. Scollard press her fingers into her throbbing temples.

"Yes, ma'am; oh, my, yes, ma'am," responded Jake, gathering up the reins. "He'll be along quick. I'll hustle an' so'll he. Say, Jimmy, if you want any more of that there cider o' mine I've got a couple o' barrels you kin have's well's not. I'd like you to git it in your own kaigs, though."

"Well, if you could wait a little, I'd go up-stairs an' ask Hannah what she thought," said Jimmy. "Mebbe you'd better git along now, though," he added, seeing Miss Bradbury's objection to further delay getting ready to explode. "I'll let you know to-morrer night. It's lodge night, anyhow, an' you'll be comin' down, won't you?"

"I guess," said Jake, and actually drove away.

To Happie's and Bob's surprise, in spite of his declaration of a mild liking for companionship, Jake did not show any desire to enter into conversation during the long up-hill drive of three miles. They stopped on their way to start "Pete Kuntz" back after the rest of the exiles, and to the children's relief, he seemed several degrees less slow and indifferent than their driver, or than Jimmy at the station. There really seemed ground for hoping, as they watched him get out his horses and jump on one to go after Jake's "hack wagon," that their tired relatives left behind might get to their new home before nightfall.

The road ran through woods, light growth chiefly, the second yield after forest fires. Sometimes these scrub oaks, birch, maples and the rest, fell away, allowing glimpses of views that made these two exiles cry out with pleasure, and gave them a fleeting hope that there might be balm in their Gilead. But the mud was thick, the wagon wheels sank low, and the tired horses toiled till Happie and Bob, true animal lovers, ached sympathetically.

It was a lonely road; they passed but one farm, and Happie's heart grew heavier and heavier with forebodings that this new home was going to tax severely her ability to live up to her nickname. The desolation, the sense of being cut off from everything on the face of the earth except mud and trees, the remembrance of her mother's weakness, was bringing on a despair that the splendid views of distant hills and valleys, caught through the openings in the trees, soon lost their power to alleviate.

"Are there many tramps around here?" asked Bob suddenly, and Happie knew that he shared her thoughts and feelings.

"Never none," said Jake promptly. "Too far from the railroad track."

"Isn't that comfortable, Hapsie?" said Bob looking with pity at his courageous sister's pale face. "And did you ever see finer views? And don't forget how tired and hungry you are, Happie! Remember things look very different on a full stomach, and when you're rested."

Happie nodded hard, not trusting herself to speak, and Bob gave up trying to point out the brighter side, invisible to himself, and contented himself with patting her hand.

At last they began to climb a hill that was far higher and steeper than any they had yet scaled, but on which, fortunately, the mud had completely dried. The ascent was beautifully wooded, with real forest growths, and bright wintergreen berries gleamed at the foot of the trees.

As they neared the top, the woods fell away, and at the summit they came out upon an open plain. On every side stretched a view that was more sublime than any upon which Bob and Happie's young eyes had ever rested. Happie forgot her weariness, hunger and despair as she straightened herself to drink it in, and Bob gave vent to a long whistle, exclaiming: "My soles and uppers!"

A little distance down the road they saw a dilapidated rail fence and what had once been a gate. Jake pointed to it with his boney hand. "That's Bittenbender's," he said. "That's your grandmother's place."

"The Ark, Hapsie, after such a long deluge!" exclaimed Bob. "But that's not our grandmother, Mr. Shale; that's Miss Bradbury, whom nobody will ever be lucky enough to have for a grandmother."

Happie had bubbled over into her infective laugh at the suggestion of Miss Keren-happuch as a grandmother, and both young people strained their eyes for the first glimpse of the house.

They got it in a moment, disclosing a brown house, sadly in need of paint, two stories high and decidedly over-shadowed by a big, ramshackle barn, gray from weather, with its front door swinging on one hinge. This melancholy building was flanked by a chicken house and granary in worse repair than itself.

"It has every foot of this glorious view!" cried Happie, seeing the disgust on Bob's face, and sincerely able herself to rejoice in the thought.

"Well, it needs it!" said Bob, and Happie could not deny that he spoke truly.

Jake turned in at the gate; Bob ironically pointed out to Happie the advantages of a gate that did not require opening.

Jake paused at the steps of the house. "I guess I'll let the trunks here," he said. "We couldn't take 'em into the house till they come with the keys anyhow."

Bob and Happie assented, and the trunks were deposited at the foot of the steps, all three of which needed mending. But after Jake had driven away, they found that the assumption that keys were needed to enter this house was a mistake—the door was not fastened; it opened on slight pressure, and Bob and Happie entered.

The unattractive odors of an old house long closed saluted them as they came in, and they caught a glimpse of a scantily furnished sitting-room and dining-room. The stairs ran up straight before them, beginning just beyond the casements of the two doors; they were not carpeted, but had once been painted a depressing drab, of which proof remained on the sides around the bannisters, though the middle of each step was worn quite bare.

Happie shrank with an irrepressible shudder; the whole aspect was so barren, so repulsive to her homesick soul.

"Let's wait for the others to see it for the first time with us," she said. "Let's sit outside on the steps till they come."

Bob smiled and drew her hand protectingly through his arm.

"You can wait to see more, you are not impatient for your new home, are you, Happie? And you like the view outside better than inside? Well, the house doesn't 'pretty much,' as old Mr. Frost used to say, but it certainly has the greatest view in Pennsylvania."

They sat down disconsolately on the steps, in the dampness of the declining day, and waited. The stillness was dreadful. Happie began to laugh, tearfully, and Bob turned to her with an anxiously inquiring look.

"No, I'm not getting crazy or hysterical," she replied to it. "I was thinking of that funny story of Ardelia in Arcady, and that the poor little street child was right when she said: 'Gee! N'Yawk's de place!'"

"Now, Happie!" exclaimed Bob reproachfully.

"I'm sorry, Bob," said Happie contritely. "I'll never so much as hint it again."

In less time than they had expected, Bob and Happie saw the large covered wagon, with its three wide seats "all filled with Scollards," Bob said, appearing at the top of the hill, and they ran down to the rickety gate to give their family a welcome which should in some sort make up for the inhospitality of their surroundings.

"Supper ready, Happie?" her mother called out cheerfully, seeing at a glance the effort that her girl was making to be blithe, and seconding it handsomely.

"Tsupper ready, Happie?" echoed Penelope sincerely.

"Not quite," Happie called back. "We waited to have you go through the house with us; we thought Aunt Keren had a right to the first inspection, so we couldn't get supper till you came."

"Where can we get supper?" asked Margery dismally.

"In our own kitchen," returned Miss Bradbury. "We have laid in quite enough provisions, and I shall not mind burning up the gate if there is no other fuel."

Bob marshaled the family up the three dilapidated steps, and threw open the door.

"One at a time, if you please, gentlemen, as the parrot said when the crows began pulling out his feathers," he remarked. "You have to go in and turn at once to the right or to the left, because there's no room in the hall to assemble. But it's all right, Aunt Keren; it will be jolly after we have jollied it a little," he added hastily, remembering the kindness that had brought them there, and fearing Miss Bradbury might think him unappreciative.

"We are explorers together, Bob; I am but your pilot, so don't dread my being hurt by your 'jollying,'" said Miss Bradbury. "I don't feel responsible for this house. I am going up to lay off my bonnet; I don't like to inaugurate our summer by putting my bonnet down on the dining-room table." And Miss Bradbury rigidly stalked up the steep stairs to begin her life in the country according to her ideas of propriety.

Margery and Laura went into the living-room, while Mrs. Scollard with her two least girls turned towards the dining-room.

Laura dropped on a chair, which promptly gave way under her, and she fell on the floor in a heap that effectually prevented the remarks she was about to make.

"Go light on our furniture, Laura," said Bob gravely. "It is marked: Fragile."

"How was I to know that horrid chair's third leg was just stuck in?" demanded Laura, with tears in her eyes; she hated of all things to be made ridiculous.

"How indeed?" echoed Bob. "How were you to know which was its third leg? I'm sure I couldn't tell."

"It's worse than I expected, Happie," said Laura indignantly, as if her sister were responsible for the fact.

"I didn't expect such a magnificent view," said Happie staunchly. "Now, if you're the poet you want to be you'll think of nothing but that one thing."

"Aunt Keren said it would be slenderly furnished," said Margery, "but I did not think any furnishing could be as slender as this is."

"This isn't slender furnishing—it's generous unfurnishing, Margery," said Happie. "Besides, what does it matter; Aunt Keren has sent up a whole carload of things! Let's go see mother and the kitchen."

Mrs. Scollard turned to meet them with a smile that was heroic, considering her shocked state of mind, and her neuralgia, and Miss Bradbury came down stairs with an expression of resolution on her face that would have befitted Jael, a likeness further carried out by Miss Keren-happuch's first remark.

"I must find some nails before I sleep and fasten something over the window in the room where I took off my bonnet; the glass is out," she remarked. "Lassies, you and I are to get supper. There are few chairs, and they are like Jenny Wren, their 'backs are bad and their legs are queer.' Fortunately there can't be less than one of a table, or we should have nothing to eat off of, and we have one table—genuine old pine! Bob, suppose you try getting water, and then forage for wood; the pump looks able-bodied, if you are."

Bob was successful in his interview with the pump, and returned victorious from his forage for wood.

The stove was rusty, and "its draught was draughty," Happie remarked, as she vainly coaxed it to give the wood the warm welcome they felt it deserved.

At last a fire was dully burning, and the water in a saucepan, appropriated in lieu of the leaking teakettle, had begun to bubble around the edges, so that there was a cheering prospect of tea. Happie vigorously beat eggs to be scrambled in the frying-pan which Miss Bradbury was scouring, and Margery cut the bread which they had brought with them, while Laura mournfully set the table with such odds and ends of crockery, politely called china, which the place afforded.

When it was ready, it really was not a very bad supper, served with the best of sauces, to all but Mrs. Scollard, who was far too worn-out to do more than nibble a crust of bread with her tea.

No one had remembered kerosene oil, so the three glass lamps discovered in the cellar were "hors de combat," Laura said, priding herself on her French surviving her despair.

There was no choice but to go to bed early for lack of light by which to sit up. Everybody's spirits were several notches higher for the comfort of food, and Penny grew quite hilarious playing trolley on a couch that had such bad springs that Bob remarked "there was no danger of a live wire on that trolley."

Jeunesse Dorée contributed to the improved state of mind of the exiles by his funny antics, going on a voyage of discovery over his new quarters, backing and shying and swelling up at imaginary dangers, and at the singular forms of new shadows, and at last settling down with his nose at a mouse hole from which there seemed to be good ground for his excited expectancy of a mouse.

One of the trunks which Jake had brought up from the station held bed clothing, and Margery and Happie, with Polly to fetch and carry, fell to making beds by the short April twilight.

Laura tried to arrange the bureaux, but the dainty toilette accessories, which had been so pretty on the broad dressers at home, looked sadly out of place on the yellow pine, the gray with red roses, the high black walnut, and the brown bureau with the yellow and blue stripes around the edges of the drawers, which constituted the outfit of the Ark.

There were five bedrooms furnished, after their fashion, and two more under the slanting kitchen roof which were unfurnished. The bedsteads were painted pine and were old-time corded affairs, but none matched a bureau—the state of things justified Laura's artistic despair.

But Happie began to sing as she spread the heterogeneous collection of beds with their white, fine sheets and soft blankets, and this was what she sang, improvising as she went, not poetically, but with better results on the listeners than all poetry yields: