oil painting in the
gallery at home, and was getting into quite a poetical mood over it,
when you had to make us laugh and spoil it all. I declare, that was too
bad!"

"Serves you right for getting poetical about me," retorted Hinpoha.

"But Nyoda," said Gladys, whose eyes had been feasting on the details of
the house with every increasing wonder and pleasure, "how does it come
that you moved into this little town from Philadelphia, and how do you
happen to be living in this wonderful old house?"

"I inherited this place a few months after I was married," replied
Nyoda. "It is the old Carver House; built before the Revolution and kept
in the family ever since. My mother was a Carver--that's how I happened
to inherit it. She died years ago, without ever dreaming that the house
would come to me, for she was not a direct heir, being only a third
cousin. But the last of the direct line died out with old Uncle Jasper
Carver and that left me the only living blood relation. So this
beautiful house and everything in it came to me."

"Oh, Nyoda, I should think you would have died of joy!" said Hinpoha in
a rapt tone. "I know people who would give their eyebrows to own so much
old Colonial furniture."

"This house has seen proud days in its time," went on Nyoda. "The
Carvers were staunch patriots, and many a meeting of loyal citizens was
held around that table in the dining room. They say that Benjamin
Franklin was once a guest here. The history of the Carver family was
Uncle Jasper's pet hobby, and he has it all printed up in books which
you may see in the library.

"The Carvers have always been a fighting family," she continued, with a
flash of pride in her black eyes. "They fought in the Revolution, in the
Civil War, and in the Spanish-American War. But now that the country is
again calling men to her aid," she finished with a sigh, "there are no
more Carver men to answer the call. I am the last of the Carvers, and I
am only a woman."

"But you've done all that you _could_ do," said Migwan staunchly.
"You've sent your husband."

Nyoda drew herself up unconsciously as her eyes sought the picture of
Sherry on the mantelpiece with the silk flag draped over it.

"Yes," she echoed softly, "the last of the Carvers has done her bit."

A dinner bell clanged through the house and Nyoda sprang up with a
start. "Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes, girls," she exclaimed.
"Scurry upstairs and remove the stains of travel w