ight range of hills that bounded it
still farther eastward. A wilderness of shade-trees bordered the main
street and seemed to cluster around every house on the narrow lanes that
branched from it, presenting a cool and refreshing picture in the hot
summer afternoon, and suggesting rosy-cheeked lasses, breezy halls and
bed-rooms, real milk instead of the manufactured article, and all the
other pleasant things traditionally supposed to belong to summer in the
country.

Up the long shady street, then down a wide bye-street that branched to
the left under the very edge of the hills, and the accommodating stage
set the city girl down at the gate of a neat-looking story-and-a-half
house, buried in trees and bowered in summer flowers, unvisited by her
for the previous three years, but before that time the scene of many an
hour of quiet rustic enjoyment. For reasons best known to herself,
Josephine Harris had chosen not to advise her hostess of her intended
visit, but she had no fears that it could possibly find her "not at
home," and indeed before the clanking steps of the coach were well let
down, the new-comer had been recognized from the house, and a young girl
came flying down the pathway to the gate. This was Susan Halstead, her
cousin, three years younger than herself, petite in figure,
brown-haired and round-faced, with the curls flying loose over her
shoulders and her childish mouth all puckered with pleasure at once more
seeing and embracing "Cousin Joe."

The stage rolled away, the luggage found its way inside the white gate,
and Josephine was soon in the arms of her matronly-looking Aunt Betsey,
her mother's sister and the country type of the family as Mrs. Harris
herself supplied that representing the city. Much taller in figure than
her daughter, a little deaf and with many threads of silver shining in
her dark hair, but with the kindest face and the merriest laugh in the
world, Mrs. Betsey Halstead furnished a pleasant specimen of those
moderately-circumstanced Lady Bountifuls of the country and the country
village, who always have a spare bed for the wayfarer, always a cup of
milk and a slice of fresh bread for the weak and the needy, and always
an unalloyed enjoyment in the coming of "company," _i.e._, _visitors_.

It need scarcely be said that the coming of merry Joe was a pleasure, as
well as a surprise, that she was overwhelmed with welcomes as well as
questions, that aunt and cousin and the tidy "help" al