nd helped me in so many ways! I
can never thank her enough. These eight months in Philadelphia have been
a liberal education for me. I'll never regret them. I hope to come back
in the fall and go on with the music lessons. By that time Royal Lee
will have found another to make love to.

So I'm going home to-day, back to Lancaster County. The trees are green
and the flowers are out--oh, I'm wild to get back!

CHAPTER XXVI

"HAME'S BEST"

LANCASTER COUNTY never before looked so fertile, so lovely, as it did
that April day when Phoebe returned to it after a long winter in
Philadelphia.

As she came unexpectedly there was no one to meet her at Greenwald. She
started across the street and was soon on the dusty road leading to the
gray farmhouse.

"Let me see," she thought, "this is Friday afternoon and Aunt Maria will
be scrubbing the kitchen floor."

But when the girl reached the kitchen of the gray house and tiptoed
gently over the sill she found the big room in order and Aunt Maria
absent.

"Why," she thought, "is Aunt Maria sick?" She opened the door to the
sitting-room and there, seated by a window, was Aunt Maria with a ball
of gray wool in her lap and five steel knitting needles plying in her
hands.

"Aunt Maria!"

"Why, Phoebe!"

The exclamations came simultaneously.

"What in the world are you doing? I mean why aren't you cleaning the
kitchen? Oh, Aunt Maria, you know what I mean! I never saw you sitting
down early on a Friday afternoon."

Aunt Maria laughed. "I ain't sick! You can see what I'm doin'; I'm
knittin'. Ain't you learned to do it yet? I can learn you."

"Why, I know how. But what are you knitting? For the Red Cross?"

"Why not? You think the ladies in Phildelphy are the only ones do that?
There's a Red Cross in Greenwald and they are askin' all who can to
help. I used to knit all my own stockings still so I thought I'd pitch
right in. I let the cleanin' slide a little this week so I could get a
good start on this once."

The girl gasped and looked at her aunt in wonder. All the days of her
life she had never known her aunt to "let the cleanin' slide," if the
physical strength were there to do the work. Aunt Maria was working for
the Red Cross! While she, who had scorned the country folks and called
them narrow, had knitted half-heartedly and spent the major part of her
time in the pursuit of pleasure, the people of the little town and
surrounding country had been doing real