re whirled out of the steaming
city, over the hills and far away, through endless stretches of sunlit
country, and the long, long hours of the hot summer day, until, at
night, they reached their destination, and found Sam Slawson waiting
there in the cool twilight to welcome them.

Followed days of rarest bliss for Martha, when she could marshal out her
small forces, setting each his particular task, and seeing it was done
with thoroughness and despatch, so that in an inconceivably short time
her new home shone with all the spotless cleanliness of the old, and
added comeliness beside.

"Ain't it the little palace?" she inquired, when all was finished. "I
wouldn't change my lodge for the great house, grand as it is, not for
anything you could offer me! Nor I wouldn't call the queen my cousin now
we're all in it together. I'm feelin' that joyful I'd like to have what
they calls a house-swarmin', only there ain't, by the looks of it, any
neighbors much, to swarm."

"No," said Ma regretfully, "I noticed there ain't no neighbors--to speak
of."

"Well, then, we can't speak o' them," returned Martha. "Which will save
us from fallin' under God's wrath as gossips. There's never any great
loss without some small gain."

"But we must have some sort of jollification," Claire insisted. "Doesn't
your wedding-day--the anniversary of it, I mean--come 'round about this
time? You said the Fourth, didn't you?"

Martha nodded. "Sam Slawson an' me'll be fifteen years married come
Fourth of July," she announced. "We chose that day, because we was so
poor we knew we couldn't do nothin' great in the line o' celebration
ourselves, so we just kinder managed it, so's without inconveniencin'
the nation any or addin' undooly to its expenses, it would do our
celebratin' for us. You ain't no notion how grand it makes a body feel
to be woke up at the crack o' dawn on one's weddin' mornin' with the
noise o' the bombardin' in honor o' the day! I'm like to miss it this
year, with only my own four young Yankees spoilin' my sleep settin' off
torpeders under my nose."

"You won't miss anything," said Claire reassuringly, "but you mustn't
say a word to Sam. And you mustn't ask any questions yourself, for what
is going to happen is to be a _wonderful_ surprise!"

"You betcher life it is!" murmured Martha complacently to herself, after
Claire had hastened off to confer with the children and plan a program
for the great day.

Ma to make the wedding-