"Cecil's from Fanshawe Grange, somewhere in Middlesex, England. Father's a
Major in France, mother's dead, got two aunts in New York. Gwen and Elise
come from Ohio, got French blood from colonial days. Frances is old
Knickerbocker stock, born on Washington Square, warranted sterling. I like
Cecil best."

When they discovered the tea-table that afternoon, Miss Emery insisted
that she would not leave until she had partaken also from the willow
pattern cups, and Sally, all blushes and smiles, prepared her first guest
tea.

After they had gone she looked at the seventy-five cents in her hand, as
though it had fallen from the sky, but Piney took the cue from Fate.

"We will serve afternoon tea here from now on," she said, "and it's going
to be twenty cents instead of fifteen. I know what we'll call this place,
Sally. There are willow trees all around here, and along the river. This
is the 'Sign of the Willow Tree.' We'll make it a stopping-off place for
all good pilgrims."

CHAPTER XXVII

HELENITA'S SONG-BIRD

The tenth of July was always a momentous date in Gilead local history.
Every year on that day, down in the little church on the Plains, the grand
old guard of '83 held their Carberry Reunion.

The girls had heard of it first through Cousin Roxy, who had been one of
the pupils of Professor Carberry in the old days at the Gayhead
schoolhouse.

"Land, girls, if we didn't have our reunion every year, we'd begin to feel
some of us were growing old," she had said laughingly. "The Professor's
class has held that reunion every year since he had to give up the school
in '89. There are a few empty places with the coming around of each July,
but I guess we'll keep on holding them as long as the Professor holds
out."

It was quite an exclusive affair in its way, so that this year, when they
were both invited to attend with their mother, Jean and Kit felt the
honor. Long afterwards, when she had attained her assured place in the
world of art, Jean exhibited a painting which won her her first medal. It
was only a shadowy interior of an old meetinghouse. The sunshine filtered
through half-closed green blinds at the long windows. Up on the platform
there sat Professor Carberry, a little, shrunken figure in black
broadcloth, the lean, scholarly old face, blanched with the snows of
eighty-odd years, filled with eagerness as he looked down on the little
assembled remnant of the old guard.

Cousin Bethiah Newell a