But she did not mind the hills or the roughness of the way. The fresh air and the free movement were delightful to her in her new freedom, and everything about her seemed beautiful. She caught sight of many a green thing growing among the dead leaves; and more than once she paused and stopped as if she would have liked to pick them. But her hands were full, and the nearer she drew to her home the more eager she grew to reach it. "I'll come again," she murmured. "Oh, I am so glad that Eunice is well!" She reached the top of a hill steeper and higher than the rest, at a point from which could be seen a few miles of the railway, passing along the valley. Her thoughts came back to her companions, and she sighed, and all at once began to feel tired; and then she sat down to rest, and, as she rested, she took a book from the bag which she had been carrying in her hand. "I am so glad that Eunice is well," she said to herself as she turned over the leaves. "She was at meeting, he said, and at the sewing-circle. Well, I am glad I came home all the same. And I can do something at `The Evidences' while I am here." She glanced on a page or two, and in her interest in them she might have forgotten her haste, and lingered, had not the sound of approaching wheels disturbed the silence a little. She rose in time to see the leisurely approach of an old grey horse and an old-fashioned weather-stained chaise. They were familiar objects to her, and some of the pleasantest associations of her life were connected with them; but her heart beat hard and her face grew pale as she watched their slow approach. "Dr Everett," said she, "are you going to see Eunice?" "Is it you, Fidelia? Are you just come home? No, I am not going to see Eunice. Is she not well? She'll be glad to see _you_, sick or well," added the doctor, as her other friend had done. He was out of the chaise by this time, and offering his hand to help her over the crooked fence. But, instead of taking it, she gave one glance in the kind good face, and laid her own down on the rough bark of the cedar rail and burst out crying. "It was full time for you to come home, I think, if that is the best greeting you have to give your friends. You've been overdoing, and have got nervous, I guess," said the doctor, moving aside first one rail and then another from the fence, to make it easier for her to get over. "Oh, no, Dr Everett, it is not that! Nervous indeed! I don't know what it means. Only I'm so glad to get home, and--so glad that Eunice is well--" If she had said another word she must have cried again. "Well, never mind. Get into the chaise, and I'll drive you home; and then I'll see about Eunice and you too."