lief in action. The
packing of her trunks and bags, the securing of tickets, cabling, had
all given her a sense of comfort. They were tangible evidences of her
progress toward Jimsy. The ocean trip was difficult; there was nothing
to _do_. Nevertheless the sea's large calm communicated itself to her;
for the greater portion of the voyage she was at peace. The situation
with Jimsy must have been grave for her stepfather to think it necessary
to send for her, but nothing could be so bad that she could not right it
when she was actually with Jimsy. She would never leave him again, she
told herself.

Feyther an' mither may a' gey mad,
But whistle an' I'll come to ye, my lad!

Her mother, her poor, lovely mother, to whom she had been always such a
disappointment, would be mad enough in all conscience, but Stepper would
stand by. And nothing--no thing, no person, mattered beside Jimsy.
Friends of her mother met her steamer in New York and put her on her
train, and friends of Stephen Lorimer met her in Chicago and drove and
dined her and saw her off on the Santa Fe. She began to have at once a
warm sense of the West and home. The California poppies on the china in
the dining-car made her happy out of all proportion. When they picked up
the desert she relaxed and settled back in her seat with a sigh and a
smile. The blessed brown, the delicious dryness! The little jig-saw
hills standing pertly up against the sky; the tiny, low-growing desert
flowers; the Indian villages in the distance, the track workers' camps
close by with Mexican women and babies waving in the doorways; even a
lean gray coyote, loping homeward, looking back over his shoulder at the
train, helped to make up the sum of her joy. _The West!_ How had she
endured being away from it so long?--From its breadth and bigness, its
sweep and space and freedom? She would never go away again. She and
Jimsy would live here always, a part of it, belonging.

She stopped worrying. She was home, and Jimsy was waiting for her, and
everything would come right.

At San Bernardino her mother and stepfather and her brothers came on
board, surprising her. She had had a definite picture of them at the
Santa Fe station in Los Angeles and their sudden appearance almost
bewildered her. Her mother was a trifle tearful and reproachful but she
was radiantly beautiful in her winter plumage. Stephen's handclasp was
solid and comforting. Her little brothers had grown out of a