sunbonnet and dress, and long, drab apron, with her hand tightly
clutched to John's arm, and dark apprehension written upon her blind
face, she was indeed a pitiable sight.

"I have pondered your words," she said to Miss Shippen, "and have
made up my mind to foller them. With naught but them to swing out
on, I am setting forth into the unknown. I that hain't never so
much as rid in a wagon, am about to dare the perils of the railroad;
that hain't been twenty mile' from home in all my days, am
journeying into a far and absent country, from which the liabilities
are I won't never return. Far'well, if far'well it be!"


On the last day of October, Miss Shippen had just dismissed her
seventh-grade class in home-nursing, and was standing in the
hospital porch drinking in the unspeakable autumnal glory of the
mountains, when a wagon, rumbling and groaning along the road and
filled with people, stopped with a lurch at the gate. Advancing,
the nurse was at first puzzled as to the identity of the people;
then she recognized the faces of John and Marthy Holt and of little
Evy. But for several seconds she gazed without recognition at the
striking figure on the front seat beside John. This figure wore a
remarkable hat, bristling with red, yellow, and green flowers, and a
plaid silk waist in which every color of the rainbow fought with
every other. Her bright and piercing dark eyes traveled hungrily
and searchingly over the countenance of the trained nurse; her lips
opened gradually over teeth of dazzling whiteness and newness.
Then, leaning swiftly from the wagon, she gathered the nurse into a
powerful, bear-like hug, exclaiming, with solemn joy: