"I thought I had it all decided--I _did_ have! Why do I have to
decide it over again?" she was saying stormily to herself. "I said I'd
do it, and I'm going to do it--what am I down here fighting in the dark
for?" But still she fought on.

It was so still about her, and with all her girl's heart she longed for
noise again--car-bells and rattling wheels and din of men's voices.
There were such wide spaces all about, and she longed for narrow
spaces--for rows on rows of houses and people coming and going. It was
the city-blood in her asserting itself. She had had her breath of space
and freedom and green, growing things, and exulted in it while it
lasted. Now she pined for her native streets. But all the sympathy and
gratitude in her went out to the little old woman who was coming home to
a lonely home--whose one dream-child was dead.

No one had ever really needed her before--to be needed appealed to her
strongly. And in the short time between her own coming to Placid Pond
and the coming of the other girls, a bond of real affection had been
established between Mrs. Camp and herself.

But hadn't she been over all this before? Long ago she had decided what
to do. Now, suddenly, she wheeled in the dark road and went hurrying in
the other direction. She would go back to Loraine on the doorstep, and
laugh and talk. She had decided "for good."

The stars came trooping out, and she lifted her face to them with a new
sense of peace. They were such friendly, twinkling little stars.

T.O. was humming a lilty little tune when she came up the path in the
starlight and joined Loraine again on the doorstep.