“Oh, no,” Dorothea answered quickly. “I’ve always been for the South, you know. ’Most everybody in England is, but I do admire Mr. Lincoln. I can’t help that. He’s queer, and his clothes don’t fit him, and—and—Oh, I can’t explain what I feel—but, when you talk to him, you know in your heart that he is a great man.” She spoke so earnestly and seriously that for a moment her hearers were impressed and there was silence around the table. “I want to hear about your coming through the lines,” Harriot broke out at last. “It must have been great fun.” “I think that had better wait till Dorothea is settled down,” Mrs. May said, rising to her feet. “Come with me, my dear, and I’ll show you to your room.” CHAPTER IV UNPACKING TRUNKS “It’s a charming room, Aunt Parthenia!” Dorothea exclaimed, glancing out of the window overlooking the box-edged beds of the flower garden, but noting particularly the cheerful blaze on the hearth. “I shall love it here so much that I shan’t ever want to go away again.” Mrs. May turned from straightening the curtains at the front where the windows opened on the gallery roof. “That’s very prettily said, my dear,” she returned. “We shouldn’t like anything better than to have you stay always in your American home.” There was a suspicion of tears in Dorothea’s eyes as she looked up at her aunt and then, impulsively, she put her arms about the elder woman with a convulsive hug. “I really have never had a home,” she murmured, half to herself; and Mrs. May, understanding what was in the girl’s heart, patted her shoulder lovingly. “April is next door to you and I’m just across the hall,” Harriot explained a moment later. “Where she can look down upon the cook-house, and see just what’s going on,” April said, banteringly. “Indeed I can,” Harriot admitted unblushingly. “I always know what Aunt Decent is baking by the smells coming in at the windows. You’ll find that my room has decided advantages, Dorothea.” While they were waiting for the trunks to be brought up Dorothea, yielding to Harriot’s insistent demands for the story of her adventures on the way from Washington, told briefly what had happened.