lcome at us.

In the background loomed the shining face and huge form of Aunty Boone.
She had never seemed bigger to me, even in my little-boy days, when I
considered her a giant. Her eyes grew dull as she looked at us.

"Clean faces and finger-nails now. Got to stain 'em up 'bout once more
'fore you are through. Hungry as ever, I'll bet. I'll get your supper
right away. Whoo-ee!"

As she turned away, Mat said:

"There is somebody else here, boys, that you will be glad to meet. She
has just come and doesn't even know that you are expected. It is 'Little
Lees.'"

A rustle of silken skirts, a faint odor of blossoms, a footfall, a
presence, and Eloise St. Vrain stood before us. Eloise, with her golden
hair, the girlish roundness of her fair face, her big dark eyes and
their heavy lashes and clear-penciled brows, her dainty coloring, and
beyond all these the beauty of womanly strength written in her
countenance.

Her dress was a sort of pale heliotrope, with trimmings of a deeper
shade, and in her hands she carried a big bunch of June roses. She
stopped short, and the pink cheeks grew pale, but in an instant the rich
bloom came back to them again.

"I tried to find you, Eloise. The boys have just come in almost
unannounced," Mat said.

"You didn't mean to hide from us, of course," Beverly broke in, as he
took the girl's hand, his face beaming with genuine joy at meeting her
again.

Eloise met him with the same frank delight with which she always greeted
him. Everything seemed so simple and easy for these two when they came
together. Little Blue Flower was right about them. They seemed to fit
each other.

But when she turned to me her eyes were downcast, save for just one
glance. I feel it yet, and the soft touch of her hand as it lay in mine
a moment.

I think we chatted all together for a while. I had a wound at Malvern
Hill that used to make me dizzy. That, or an older wound, made my pulse
frantic now. I know that it was a rare June day, and the breeze off the
river came pouring caressingly over the bluff. I remember later that
Uncle Esmond and Jondo and Rex Krane went to the Clarenden store, and
that Mat was helping Aunty Boone inside, while Beverly let the two
little Kranes take him down the slope to see some baby squirrels or
something. And Eloise and I were left alone beneath the trees, where
once we had sat together long ago in the "Moon of the Peach Blossom."
For me, all the strength of the years whe