e! I owe you an humble
apology, Miss Garnet. Yes, I do. I've thrust a confidence on you without
your permission. I--I beg your pardon! I didn't mean to, I declare I
didn't, Miss Garnet."

"It's safe."

"I know it. I'm surer of that than if you were anyone else I've ever
known in my life, Miss Garnet."

"It shall be as if I had never heard it."

"O no! I don't see how it can. In fact--well--I don't see why it
should--unless you wish it so. Of course, in that case----"

"That's not a con-tin-gen-cy," said Barbara, and for more than a minute
they listened to the clangorous racket of the rails. Then John asked her
if it did not have a quality in it almost like music and she brightened
up at him as she nodded.

He made a gesture toward the receding land, bent to her in the uproar
and cried, "It scarcely seems a moment since those hills were full of
spring color, and now they're blue in the distance!"

She looked at them tenderly and nodded again.

"At any rate," he cried, holding his hat on and bending lower, "we have
Dixie for our common mother." His manner was patriotic.

She glanced up to him--the distance was trivial--beaming with sisterly
confidence, and just then the train lurched, and--he caught her.

"H-I conscience! wa'n't it lucky I happened to have my arm back there
just at that moment?"

Barbara did not say. She stood with her back against the car, gazing at
the track, her small feet braced forward with new caution, but she saw
March lapse into reverie and heave another sigh.

However, she observed his mind return and rightly divined he was
thinking her silence a trifle ungracious; so she lifted her hand toward
a white cloud that rose above the vanished hills and river, saying:

"Our common mother waves us farewell."

"Yes," he cried with grateful pleasure. Seeing her draw her wrap closer
he added, "You're cold?" And it was true, although she shook her head.
He bent again to explain. "It'll be warmer when we leave this valley.
You see, here----"

"Yes," she nodded so intelligently that he did not finish. Miss Garnet,
however, was thinking of her chaperone and dubiously glanced back at the
door. Then she braced her feet afresh. They were extremely pretty.

He smiled at them. "You needn't plant yourself so firmly," he said, "I'm
not going to let you fall off."

O dear! That reversed everything. She had decided to stay; now she
couldn't.

Once more the Northern pair received them with placid i