all the
places I ever saw." Then Elsie came running on to the porch, and Rose
jumped out into her arms.

"I thank the goodness and the grace
That on my birth has smiled,
And brought me to this blessed place
A happy Boston child!"

she cried, hugging Elsie rapturously. "You dear thing! how well you
look! and how perfect it all is up here! And this is Mr. Page, whom I
have known all about ever since the Hillsover days! and this is dear
little Geoff! Clover, his eyes are exactly like yours! And where is
_your_ baby, Elsie?"

"Little wretch! she _would_ go to sleep. I told her you were coming, and
I did all I could, short of pinching, to keep her awake,--sang, and
repeated verses, and danced her up and down, but it was all of no use.
She would put her knuckles in her eyes, and whimper and fret, and at
last I had to give in. Babies are perfectly unmanageable when they are
sleepy."

"Most of us are. It's just as well. I can't half take it in as it is. It
is much better to keep something for to-morrow. The drive was perfect,
and the Valley is twice as beautiful as I expected it to be. And now I
want to go into the house."

Elsie had devoted her day to setting forth the Hut to advantage. She and
Roxy had been to the very top of the East Canyon for flowers, and
returned loaded with spoil. Bunches of coreopsis and vermilion-tipped
painter's-brush adorned the chimney-piece; tall spikes of yucca rose
from an Indian jar in one corner of the room, and a splendid sheaf of
yellow columbines from another; fresh kinnikinick was looped and
wreathed about the pictures; and on the dining-table stood, most
beautiful and fragile of all, a bowlful of Mariposa lilies, their
delicate, lilac-streaked bells poised on stems so slender that the
fairy shapes seemed to float in air, supported at their own sweet will.
There were roses, too, and fragrant little knots of heliotrope and
mignonette. With these Rose was familiar; the wild flowers were all new
to her.

She ran from vase to vase in a rapture. They could scarcely get her
upstairs to take off her things. Such a bright evening followed! Clover
declared that she had not laughed so much in all the seven years since
they parted. Rose seemed to fit at once and perfectly into the life of
the place, while at the same time she brought the breath of her own more
varied and different life to freshen and widen it. They all agreed that
they had neve