badly if I thought you didn't!

"We plan to start Thursday evening, December third. We can't make quite
as good connections as I did in coming, so, according to Doctor Wood's
figuring with the time-tables, we shall go through the home city at one
o'clock on Saturday morning. We shall be in the station twenty minutes,
being switched around, and--well, I don't like to ask anybody to stay up
till that hour, but--I shall be up, and looking out--and--and--I'm almost
afraid that if I didn't see anybody, I should shed just a tear or two!
You see I haven't really cried once yet--and I don't want to break my
record.

"Your Sally."

It really is not necessary to report what was said in Sally's home upon
the receipt of this announcement. There was a good deal of excited
talking done, and a number of statements were made to the effect that it
was out of the question for Sally to be spared all winter, that she
should have waited for the consent of her family before deciding on such
an absence, and that it absolutely must not be allowed. Yet, after all,
when it came to forbidding it, nobody seemed to have quite the authority
to do that. Even Max, protesting that the thing was out of all reason,
and going so far as to take his pen in hand to write his refusal to
permit it, found himself brought to a halt by the remembrance that Sally
was showing more and more evidences of possessing a will of her own, and
of being perfectly competent to carry out its dictates when they seemed
to her right. Clearly she did not want to go South with Uncle Timothy--or
with anybody else. There was a homesick touch in more than one line of
the stoutly written letter--unquestionably Sally would not be doing this
thing if she were not persuaded of her duty.

At one o'clock in the morning of Saturday a party of people stood in the
great electric-lighted station. Again the offices of Mr. Jarvis Burnside
had taken the group past the usual hindrances and established them on a
certain platform, nearly in the centre of the rows of tracks, where the
Southbound Limited would come in. This time their numbers were
considerably augmented by the presence of Mrs. Burnside and Josephine,
Donald and Janet Ferry. Various packages encumbered the arms of each
member of the party, and appearances certainly boded well for the
reception of the young traveller who at the moment was watching eagerly,
as the train rolled through the familiar streets, for the first sign of
appr