imaginary farewell. 'Verily the noisy city shall know us no more,
for we depart for the green forests.'

'And the city will not be as noisy WHEN you depart,' murmured Jack,
with an impudence that luckily passed unnoticed.

'If Elsie could only come too!' sighed Polly.


Wednesday morning dawned as bright and beautiful as all mornings are
wont to dawn in Southern California. A light mist hung over the old
adobe mission church, through which, with its snow-white towers and
cold, clear-cut lines, it rose like a frozen fairy castle. Bell
opened her sleepy eyes with the very earliest birds, and running to
the little oval window, framed with white-rose vines, looked out at
the new day just creeping up into the world.

'Oh dear and beautiful home of mine, how charming, how charming you
are! I wonder if you are not really Paradise!' she said, dreamily;
and the marvel is that the rising sun did not stop a moment in sheer
surprise at the sight of this radiant morning vision; for the oval
window opening to the east was a pretty frame, with its outline
marked by the dewy rose-vine covered with hundreds of pure, half-
opened buds and swaying tendrils, and she stood there in it, a fair
image of the morning in her innocent white gown. Her luminous eyes
still mirrored the shadowy visions of dreamland, mingled with dancing
lights of hope and joyful anticipation; while on her fresh cheeks,
which had not yet lost the roundness of childhood, there glowed, as
in the eastern skies, the faint pink blush of the morning.