ed "nice;" but
Johnny was older, and only laughed.

"And I can go to the stores if it does rain and go up in the
_alleviator_, for I brought my little umbrella."

"You don't need an umbrella in an elevator. And we don't _have_
elevators," said Johnny.

Everybody was smiling, for it was plain that Flaxie's head was a little
turned. She was thinking of New York city, and had forgotten that
Hilltop was only a small village.

She had been here two or three times before, and knew her way all over
the house: it was a double-house, with another family in the other part.
She remembered Aunt Charlotte's pictures, and vases, and
ship-thermometer, and the tidy with a donkey on it drinking from a
trough. She had spoiled two of the albums when she was a _little_ girl,
and broken ever so much china; so you see she had reason to feel quite
at home at Aunt Charlotte's. Ah, but she had never been there before
without her mother!

The afternoon did seem rather long, but Aunt Charlotte told funny
stories, and after a great while the boys came home from school, and
there was a jolly game of romps. Flaxie thought she was very happy.

"We are doing better with her than I expected," said Aunt Charlotte to
her husband next morning, when the bright face beamed on them at
breakfast. "I'm so glad you brought her, for I do miss my little Milly."

Flaxie, too, missed Milly, but was resolved to be a little woman, and
said to Christie Gretchen privately, "_We_ won't cry." After breakfast
she spent two hours in the kitchen with patient Nancy, spatting out
little ginger cakes, and picking dirt from the cracks of the floor with
a pin. Then she danced off to the sitting-room to play with the baby,
telling him "if he'd be goody, he'd grow up a doctor, like my papa." She
had promised the same thing to every boy baby at Laurel Grove, for
doctors were the best people in the world, she thought, and best of all
was Dr. Papa.

She was as happy as ever, and singing merrily in the front yard, when
the boys came home at noon. The moment she saw them she felt perfectly
forlorn, and it suddenly seemed to her as if she couldn't live any
longer without Milly. That wasn't the worst of it; she _knew_ she
couldn't live any longer without her mother.

It was a terrible feeling that swept all at once over little Flaxie. I
wonder if _you_ ever had it? If not, you can't understand it: it was
_homesickness_. There is no ache or pain like it in the whole world, and