. "The time has come!" she thought. "I am saying
good-by to Sunnybrook, and the golden gates that almost swung together
that last day in Wareham will close forever now. Good-by, dear brook
and hills and meadows; you are going to see life too, so we must be
hopeful and say to one another:--

"'Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be.'"

Will Melville had seen the surveyors too, and had heard in the
Temperance post-office that morning the probable sum that Mrs. Randall
would receive from the railway company. He was in good spirits at his
own improved prospects, for his farm was so placed that its value could
be only increased by the new road; he was also relieved in mind that
his wife's family would no longer be in dire poverty directly at his
doorstep, so to speak. John could now be hurried forward and forced
into the position of head of the family several years sooner than had
been anticipated, so Hannah's husband was obliged to exercise great
self-control or he would have whistled while he was driving Rebecca to
the Temperance station. He could not understand her sad face or the
tears that rolled silently down her cheeks from time to time; for
Hannah had always represented her aunt Miranda as an irascible,
parsimonious old woman, who would be no loss to the world whenever she
should elect to disappear from it.

"Cheer up, Becky!" he said, as he left her at the depot. "You'll find
your mother sitting up when you come back, and the next thing you know
the whole family'll be moving to some nice little house wherever your
work is. Things will never be so bad again as they have been this last
year; that's what Hannah and I think;" and he drove away to tell his
wife the news.

Adam Ladd was in the station and came up to Rebecca instantly, as she
entered the door looking very unlike her bright self.

"The Princess is sad this morning," he said, taking her hand. "Aladdin
must rub the magic lamp; then the slave will appear, and these tears be
dried in a trice."

He spoke lightly, for he thought her trouble was something connected
with affairs at Sunnybrook, and that he could soon bring the smiles by
telling her that the farm was sold and that her mother was to receive a
handsome price in return. He meant to remind her, too, that though she
must leave the home of her youth, it was too remote a place to be a
proper dwelling either for herself or for her lonely mother and the
three younger children. He could