like splendor, and made her afraid. It fell more heavily than she supposed
it would, and the clang sounded to her over-wrought nerves as if it filled
the whole street. No one came. They looked at the windows. The curtains
were all down. There was no sign of life about the place. Tears came into
Jane's eyes. She was worn out with the fatigue of the journey.

"Oh dear, oh dear," she said, "I wish we hadn't come."

"Pshaw, mother," said Reuben, with a voice cheerier than his heart, "very
likely they never got our last letter, and don't know we were to be here
to-day," and he knocked again.

Instantly a window opened in the opposite house, and a jolly voice said,
"My gracious," and in the twinkling of an eye the jolly owner of the jolly
voice had opened her front door and run bareheaded across the street, and
was shaking hands with Reuben and Jane and Draxy, all three at once, and
talking so fast that they could hardly understand her.

"My gracious I my gracious! Won't Mrs. Melville be beat! Of course you're
her folks she was expecting from the West, ain't you? I mistrusted it
somehow as soon as I heard the big knock. Now I'll jest let you in the
back door. Oh my, Mis' Melville'll never get over this; to think of her
be'n' away, an' she's been lookin' and looking and worryin' for two weeks,
because she didn't hear from you; and only last night Captain Melville he
said he'd write to-day if they didn't hear.'"

"We wrote," said Draxy, in her sweet, low voice, "we wrote to Aunt Emma
that we'd come to-day."

"Now did you!" said the jolly voice. "Well, that's jest the way. You see