ways,"
grumbled Aunt Barbara, who had the kindest heart in the world, and was
listening anxiously every minute for Betty's footsteps.

It was very pleasant to be safe in the old house at last. The young
guest did not feel any sense of strangeness. She used to be afraid of
Aunt Barbara when she was a child, but she was not a bit afraid now; and
Aunt Mary, who seemed a very lovely person then, was now a little bit
tiresome,--or else Betty herself was tired and did not find it easy to
listen.

After supper; and it was such a too-good supper, with pound-cakes, and
peach jam, and crisp shortcakes, and four tall silver candlesticks, and
Betty being asked to her great astonishment if she would take tea and
meekly preferring some milk instead; they came back to the doorway. The
moon had come up, and the wide lawn in front of the house (which the
ladies always called the yard) was almost as light as day. The syringa
bushes were in full bloom and fragrance, and other sweet odors filled
the air beside. There were two irreverent little dogs playing and
chasing each other on the wide front walk and bustling among the box and
borders. Betty could hear the voices of people who drove by, or walked
along the sidewalk, but Tideshead village was almost as still as the
fields outside the town. She answered all the questions that the aunts
kindly asked her for conversation's sake, and she tried to think of ways
of seeming interested in return.

"Can I climb the cherry-tree this summer, Aunt Barbara?" she asked once.
"Don't you remember the day when there was a tea company of ladies here,
and Mary Beck and I got some of the company's bonnets and shawls off the
best bed and dressed up in them and climbed up in the trees?"

"You looked like two fat black crows," laughed Aunt Barbara, though she
had been very angry at the time. "All the fringes of those thin best
shawls were catching and snapping as you came down. Oh, dear me, I
couldn't think what the old ladies would say. None of your mischief now,
Miss Betty!" and she held up a warning forefinger. "Mary Beck is coming
to see you to-morrow; you will find some pleasant girls here."

"Tideshead has always been celebrated for its cultivated society, you
know, dear," added Aunt Mary.

Just now a sad feeling of loneliness began to assail Betty. The summer
might be very long in passing, and anything might happen to papa. She
put her hand into her pocket to have the comfort of feeling a crumpl