once more the face
which had watched her entrance.

"You've been gone a good while, Lois!"

"Yes, grandma. Too long, did you think?"

"I don' know, child. That depends on what you stayed for."

"Does it? Grandma, I don't know what I stayed for. I suppose because it
was pleasant."

"Pleasanter than here?"

"Grandma, I haven't been home long enough to know. It all looks and
feels so strange to me as you cannot think!"

"What looks strange?"

"Everything! The house, and the place, and the furniture--I have been
living in such a different world till my eyes have grown unaccustomed.
You can't think how odd it is."

"What sort of a world have you been living in, Lois? Your letters
didn't tell." The old lady spoke with a certain serious doubtfulness,
looking at the girl by her side.

"Didn't they?" Lois returned. "I suppose I did not give you the
impression because I had it not myself. I had got accustomed to that,
you see; and I did not realize how strange it was. I just took it as if
I had always lived in it."

"_What?_"

"O grandma, I can never tell you so that you can understand! It was
like living in the Arabian Nights."

"I don't believe in no Arabian Nights."

"And yet they were there, you see. Houses so beautiful, and filled with
such beautiful things; and you know, grandmother, I like things to be
pretty;--and then, the ease, I suppose. Mrs. Wishart's servants go
about almost like fairies; they are hardly seen or heard, but the work
is done. And you never have to think about it; you go out, and come
home to find dinner ready, and capital dinners too; and you sit reading
or talking, and do not know how time goes till it is tea-time, and then
there comes the tea; and so it is in-doors and out of doors. All that
is quite pleasant."

"And you are sorry to be home again?"

"No, indeed, I am glad. I enjoyed all I have been telling you about,
but I think I enjoyed it quite long enough. It is time for me to be
here. Is the frost well out of the ground yet?"

"Mr. Bince has been ploughin'."

"Has he? I'm glad. Then I'll put in some peas to-morrow. O yes! I am
glad to be home, grandma." Her hand nestled in one of those worn, bony
ones affectionately.

"Could you live just right there, Lois?"

"I tried, grandma."

"Did all that help you?"

"I don't know that it hindered. It might not be good for always; but I
was there only for a little while, and I just took the pleasure of it."

"Seems to me,