h, Hannah, if it keeps up we shan't be able to go to Briston
to-morrow for my suit."

"We'll go in the sleigh. Hughie spoke of it at breakfast."

"A brown suit," mused Joan with shining eyes. "A brown hat and furs!
Think, Hannah! _Furs_! I do hope I shall look well in them."

"Mr. O'Neill said you would and he ought to know."

Joan laughed and blushed.

At twilight the next night she came home dressed warmly in furs and a
suit the color of her eyes.

"She would wear it home, Mr. O'Neill," whispered Hannah on ahead. "And
all, I think, to surprise you."

Often afterward Kenny remembered her there in the half twilight of the
kitchen, joyously crying out his name. There had been a glimmer of
shining tin, a halo of light from the tilted stove-lids, purple at the
window panes and beyond snow and the distant tinkle of sleighbells in
the barn. Hetty, he remembered, had lighted the kitchen lamp and
gasped. A lovely child, proud and mischievous! Her youth startled him.

In a week she was ready and eager to go but the day of farewell found
her clinging to Hannah in a panic.

When at last the old Craig carriage creaked slowly away down the lane
with Hannah and Hetty waving from the farm-porch, the spirit of
adventure flickered forlornly out and left her sobbing.

"Good-bye, Hannah dear!" she called, her eyes wet and wistful.
"Good-bye, Hetty! And--and don't forget to write me _all_ the news!
And don't let Toby catch the birds!"

Hughie, blinking and upset, stared straight ahead at Nellie's ears.

Kenny sobered. How great his trust! Hannah, waving her apron back
there and wiping her eyes, trusted him. And so did Hughie and Joan and
even perhaps old Adam Craig; and Mr. Abbott whose gentle grilling he
had endured with merely surface patience.

"Don't cry, Joan, please!" he begged, understanding how dear familiar
things are apt to loom in the pain of separation. And then with her
hand to his lips, he pledged himself to make her happiness the religion
of his love. It was a pledge he was destined to keep inviolate.

Ordinarily to Kenny, impatient in intervals of discomfort and delay,
the trip with its rural junctions and branch roads would have been
interminable torture. But to-day, with Joan's eyes, wide, dark,
intent, he chose to marvel with her.

They lunched at noon between trains in a little country inn. At seven,
having come after much fragmentary travel into a comforting world of
express trains a