"That used to come to me in the long passages upstairs, and I would run--oh, how I ran! Well, Mary, it was like that. Ever since I came back and found no word from Tom, I had felt this behind me. I had just seen it over my shoulder and I wouldn't turn round and look at it: I was afraid. But when I heard--that, you know; something definite, whether it was true or not--I turned square round and looked at it, and I found it wasn't so frightful after all. I wanted Tom to be happy, didn't I? I didn't want him back if he didn't want to come. I saw all the dear neighbors, so many of them living single--really _most_ of them, Mary! Cyrus is the most unmarried place that ever was, I do believe! and all so good, and so happy and busy--why, I said, 'Goose! do try to have a _little_ sense!' That helped me ever so much, Mary. I don't say I liked it, you know, but--well, it was easier because it was harder, if you see what I mean. And then--I began to do things, and that helped too." I had heard of some of the things she began to do at this time. It was then that she began the Saturday picnics for the school children, taking a wagonload of them out with Old Crummles to some lovely pasture or woodpiece, and frolicking with them all the morning. Then would come the feast: always chicken pie, because Kitty thought children liked that better than anything else (except icecream, which was sloppy to take on picnics) currant buns and raspberry tartlets and lemonade in a stone jug. What times those children did have! Then, too, little by little, she found out all the "poor things" for miles around. Half-invalids, who needed carriage exercise; tired country women who had no horse and could not walk so far as the village for their errands; sad people with few "privileges," to whom a cheery call, a book or magazine or nosegay would change the hue of a whole day from drab to rose-color. Kitty found them all out, and took them "buggy-riding," or sat on their steps and told them gay little stories. Every child for ten miles round Cyrus knew her, and set up a shout of "Miskitty! Miskitty!" (the first syllable strongly accented!) "gimme a ride!" She loved them all, but John Tucker often wished there was no such a thing as young uns in the endurin' world. She told me of a pleasant happening.