h dared not laugh, for mamma's forefinger was raised. Mamma
never allowed them to ridicule the friendship of the two little girls,
who had made believe for more than a year that they were "aunt" and
"niece." The play might be rather foolish, but the love was very sweet
and true.

Lucy had been thinking all day of Barbara and longing for her arrival. A
full hour before it was time for the stage she went a little way up the
mountain with Jimmy, and they took turns gazing down the winding, dusty
road through a spy-glass. "I shan't wait here any longer. What's the
use?" declared Jimmy.

"She's coming! she's coming! I saw her first!" was Lucy's glad cry. And
she ran down the mountain in haste, though the stage, a grayish green
one, was just turning a curve at least a mile away.

"Well, you _have_ been parted a good while," said Uncle James, as the
two dear friends met and embraced on the coach steps; "a day and a
half!"

"I'd have 'most died if I'd waited any longer," said Aunt Lucy, putting
her arm around her niece and leading her up the gravel path with the
pink "old hen and chickens" on either side.

The little girls were entirely unlike, and the contrast was pleasant to
see. Lucy was very fair, with light curling hair:--

"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
That ope in the month of May."

Bab was quite as pretty, but in another way. She had brilliant dark eyes
and straight dark hair with a satin gloss. She was half a head shorter
than her "auntie," though their ages were about the same. People liked
to see them together, for they were always sociable and happy, and loved
each other "dearilee."

"Oh, Bab," said wee Lucy, "I had such a _loneness_ without you!"

"I had a loneness too, Auntie Lucy. Seemed as if the time never would
go."

And then the dark head and the fair head met again for more kisses,
while both the mammas looked on and said, in low tones and with smiles,
as they always did:--

"How sweet! Now we shall hear them singing about the place like two
little birds."

This was Tuesday. The days went on happily until Thursday afternoon,
when "the Dunlee party," which always included the Hales and Sanfords,
set forth up the mountain for a sight of the famous "air-castle." Of
course Nate was with them, but this time not as a guide; the guide was
Uncle James.

The road, though rather steep, was not a ha