“How ever could she have lost her arm?” wondered Carin. “A boy might have shot his off, but it’s strange for a girl to have lost an arm.” “Oh, well,” said Aunt Zillah philosophically, “we came up here to find some queer people, and we’re not disappointed. Queerness often means unhappiness, that’s what I’ve discovered. If you girls succeed in doing what you came up to do and help these poor people out of some of their troubles and drawbacks, perhaps they won’t be so queer.” The evenings at home—they called the cottage “home” now and had named it the “Oriole’s Nest”—were very restful and delightful. If Carin went to bed, she did so on the couch in the sitting room, so that she might be with the others. Sometimes Aunt Zillah sewed—always for Annie Laurie—and sometimes she read aloud. Azalea had some crocheting with which she busied herself. Mrs. Carson had taught her to make some beautiful things, and Azalea had developed a sort of passion for them. She wanted to make something lovely for everyone she loved; and Mrs. Carson’s last gift to her had been a great quantity of beautiful wools of many delicate shades. Keefe O’Connor dropped in the little house evenings, too, and added to the gayety by “picking” on the guitar which he had borrowed from the McEvoys. Sitting on the doorstep, his handsome head thrown back against the casing, his dark eyes fixed with something like yearning affection on the group in the room, he crept, brotherly fashion, into the heart of each of them. He did not explain himself—said nothing of his parents, of his past, of his means of living—yet he seemed to have for his own Bohemian purposes, all that he needed, and to be happy in spite of that curious wistfulness which everyone felt who came near him. “It does seem as if he was honing for something,” Mrs. McEvoy said one day when he was under discussion. “It may only be liver trouble, of course. If so, I could help him out there. I’ve got three bottles of liver special that I ain’t never took. Or if it’s indigestion or rheumatism, there again I could be of aid to him. I was saying to Miles the other night, seems as if, since you folks came, I didn’t pay half the attention to my medicine that I used to. Aside from them two bottles in the kitchen, I don’t call on none of them.” “And if those two bottles weren’t sitting where you could see them,” said Miss Zillah with unusual boldness, “probably you wouldn’t be taking the medicine from them. I do say, Mrs. McEvoy, and I’ll abide by it, that health is nine-tenths a matter of good food, good air and a happy heart.” “Oh, la,” said Mrs. McEvoy with more temper than any of them had yet seen in her, “it’s easy for you to say that, Miss Pace, when you’ve got your health. But if you’d been through what I have—” She could not bring herself to finish, but suddenly remembering that she had some baking to do, left hastily and walked with unusual swingings of her body down the path that led to her home.