Murphy brought me
down with two sheet-loads of my things and some beds from the hospital,
and here I am."

"Hurrah!" they cried again, joining hands and dancing in a circle around
Sallie.

"'Here's to good old Sallie, drink her down,
Drink her down, drink her down, drink her down!'"

After this wild outburst of joy over the return of another wanderer to
the fold, Sallie began to remove her outer wrappings.

"I feel like an Egyptian mummy," she remarked as she skinned off two
long coats and unwound several scarfs.

"You look like a pouter pigeon," said Judy, "what have you got stuffed
in there?"

"Mail," said Sallie, unbuttoning another jacket, "mail for Queen's. Mr.
Murphy gave it to me when he came to get my things. And, by the way,"
she added, "I saved my rocking chair and sat in it as I drove down to
the village. Wasn't it beautiful? I suppose I'll be lampooned now as
'Sallie, the emigrant.' But it was too cold to care much. I was only
thankful I had taken the precaution to fill the hot-water bag and the
thermos bottle before I started on the drive."

CHAPTER XX.

THE TURN OF THE WHEEL.

Sallie Marks had, indeed, received a royal welcome from her friends.
They were as glad to see her as if she had just returned from a long
voyage. Now they poked the fire and made fresh tea and petted and
caressed her until her pale, near-sighted eyes were quite watery and she
was obliged to wipe the moisture from her glasses.

"We'll make out the winter here, girls," she assured them. "It may take
a week to get the house in order, but we can put up with a little
discomfort to have O'Reilly's to ourselves. If they would only strip off
this bilious paper and lay a few mattings! The plumbing is better than
it was at Queen's, and the heating arrangements, too."

The room was really very comfortable what with the fire in the grate
and the heat pouring up the register.

"It was a defective flue that made old Queen's go under," observed
Katherine sadly, as if she were speaking of a dear friend who had lately
passed into another life. "I am afraid her heating apparatus was a
little second class."

"Speak no evil of the dead," admonished her sister Edith.

"_Requiescat in pace_," said Sallie in a solemn voice.

"_La reine est morte; vive la reine_," said Margaret.

"After all, we are really 'Queen's'" said Judy, "so let's be as happy as
we can. Where are those letters, Sallie?"

Sallie unbuttoned the