That
youngster looked like an angel and acted like a little imp. I should
think his folks'd be glad to lose him."

"No, Gerry, you don't think that. You don't want anybody to be unhappy
now that we're all so glad you're well and back. I hope Jim will find
the little Saint right soon and be back, too; but don't you think
they'll be frightened about you? It just came to me--what can they
think, when they come back and find you gone, except that you were out
of your mind and wandered off? You that had been in bed till then!"
asked Dorothy.

"Oh! they won't bother about me. Jim's been as good as gold and I've
been pretty hateful, sometimes, I know. It'll be a relief to him and
Mrs. Stillwell that I'm off their hands. Why, folks, do you know? That
slender slip of a woman does almost all their farm work, herself? Her
husband--I fancied from what I had sense enough to understand--hates
work, that kind, anyway, and she adores him. I know Jim took a hand,
soon's I was well enough, or good-natured enough, to let him off
sticking inside with me. I never saw a fellow work so, I could
see through the window by my bed. They hadn't any horse and he
ploughed with a cow! Fact. He dug potatoes, hoed corn, cleared up
brush-wood--did that with his jack-knife--carried water--Couldn't tell
what he didn't do! Oh! Mrs. Stillwell will be glad enough to be rid
of me but she'll hate to miss Jim. Hello, Elsa! What in the world!"

Mabel laughed and clapped her hands.

"Isn't it the queerest thing? and isn't it just jolly?

"She fell in love with them that morning when they came. Elsa, timid
Elsa, is the only one of us not afraid of the monkeys! She's
captivated them, some way, and is actually training them to do
whatever she wants. She's taught them to walk, arm in arm, and to bow
'Thank you' for bits of Chloe's cake. She punishes them when they
catch the birds and--lots of things. Are you taking them for their
'constitutional' now, Elsa dear?"

The shy girl, whose poverty and ungraceful manners had made Aurora and
Mabel look down upon her at the beginning of the trip, had now become
the very "heart of things," as Dolly said. Elsa was always ready to
mend a rent, to hunt up lost articles, to sit quietly in the cabin
when anybody had a headache and soothe the pain and loneliness, and to
do the many little things needed and which none of the others noticed.
It had come to be "Elsa, here!" or "Elsa, there!" almost continually;
and the best of