"Now 'wink as much as you please,' as the man said that took an
awful-looking daguerreotype of me once. Good-by. Here's where I get out.
And there they all are to meet me." And then, the cars stopping, she
made her way, with her carpet-bag and parasol and a great newspaper
bundle, gathered up hurriedly from goodness knows where, along the
passage, and out upon the platform.

"Why, it's the strangest thing! I don't feel it in the least! Do you
suppose it ever _will_ come out again, Augusta?" cried Elinor, in a tone
greatly altered from any in which she had spoken for two hours.

"Of course it will," cried "Gray-bonnet" from beneath the window. "Don't
be under the least mite of concern about anything but looking out for it
when it does, to keep it against next time."

Leslie saw the plain, kindly woman surrounded in a minute by half a
dozen eager young welcomers and claimants, and a whole history came out
in the unreserved exclamations of the few instants for which the train
delayed.

"Oh, it's _such_ a blessing you've come! I don't know as Emma Jane would
have been married at all if you hadn't!"

"We warn't sure you'd get the letter."

"Or as Aunt Nisby would spare you."

"'Life wanted to come over on his crutches. He's just got his new ones,
and he gets about first-rate. But we wouldn't let him beat himself out
for to-morrow."