Indian summer had come once more, and the same soft haze which, only last year, the girls had seen over the blue Connecticut with its meadows and mountains, now rested quite as lovingly upon the dull waters of the Missouri, as they wound along between their low bluffs and level prairies. There, there had been the restful quiet of the old town, peacefully living on the reputation of its two centuries of strong, honorable life, justly proud of the famous names it had given to its state and country; here, there was the ceaseless, unwearying bustle of a new civilization, the restless activity of a city whose glory was yet to be and whose present ambition was only to grow and to accumulate riches. All the contrast between the two places, all the change from the surroundings of a year ago to the life of to-day were keenly felt by the young girl who was sitting on the piazza of a little house in Omaha, one morning, idly enjoying the late autumn sunshine. "Come out here a minute, Jessie," she called suddenly, as she heard some one coming down the stairs behind her. "We shan't have many more days like this, and do let's take a few minutes to enjoy this one." "But Aunt Jane would say it was sinful to waste the golden moments," said Jessie, laughing, as, duster in hand, she came out on the steps. "Not a bit of it," said the other. "I haven't sat down before this since my breakfast, and I know that lunch will be all the better, if I take a few minutes to rest and breathe this lovely air. Where's mamma?" "She's lying down; she said her head ached. Oh, Kit, doesn't this make you homesick for last year and all the girls?" "And Alan, too," added Katharine. "Yes, it does, Jessie, whenever I stop to think of it. We did have a perfect year at auntie's, and once in a while I wish we were back there. Do you remember the day Job was loose, and they couldn't catch him?" "'I feel it in my bones,' as Miss Bean would say," said Jessie; "that the time will come when we shall all be together again. At least, we made the very most of our time." "True," said Katharine thoughtfully; "and I don't know what we should have done this summer, Jessie, if we hadn't had those lessons in cooking. I had no idea then that we shouldn't always have servants, and if we'd stayed here, we never should have known anything about housekeeping. And the worst of it is, I like it. I always knew I had plebeian tastes and, now I am used to it, I fairly revel in washing dishes." "I'm not half so homesick for the old house as I thought I should be," said Jessie, while she meditatively folded a series of tucks in her gingham apron. "It was dreadful at first, having to leave the old place and the servants and the furniture; but, after all, we haven't had such a bad time. I don't know as I want to do housework for a living, I prefer medicine; but I don't mind it a bit, for a while. If I'm to keep old maid's hall, I want to know how to do it."