It was well toward sunset when the last guest departed. Nancy, standing in the doorway with the empty house behind her, and before her the deserted garden, with its chairs and tables in crazy disarray, sent a wild little prayer down the road after the purple automobile that had whirled away carrying the great master and her poor little play. "_Please_ think it's good! I worked so hard." As her eye caught the gleam of gabled housetops through the trees Nancy suddenly pictured how, at that very moment, every home in Freedom was echoing with the story of the party. It had been a success! All Freedom--through the women's eyes--had been there to see precious Aunt Milly; now they knew that Happy House was a happy house. And, wonder of wonders, she had heard Mrs. Sniggs, in a most friendly way, ask Liz Hopworth to drop in and show her how she made her "plum jell." Suddenly Nancy seemed to hear Peter Hyde saying: "I didn't see anything but you!" How silly he'd been--putting that absurd dandelion stem into his pocket, as though it really _had_ some magic! Then, with quite unaccountable haste, as though to run away from her own meditations, Nancy rushed to the kitchen and begged B'lindy to let her help "clear up." CHAPTER XX A PICNIC A reaction set in after the party, Miss Milly, over-fatigued, had had to stay in her room. Happy House, itself, fell back into its old ways; again the blinds were shut, the flower vases disappeared and the peacock feathers were returned to their places of honor. B'lindy developed rheumatism. Too, a week followed of long hot days and stifling nights, "brewin' up for somethin'," B'lindy declared. Nancy, her play finished, suffered from a restlessness she had never known before. She told herself that, now her work was done, she must not linger at Happy House; then found that she could not bear to face the thought of going! These ties that she had made bound her closely. It was not as though she might come back as they would think she could--the separation must be forever. And the day must come when these good people she had grown to love would know that she had deceived and cheated them! "That is my punishment," she thought, in real distress. On the morning of a day that differed only from the other cloudless days in that the sky was bluer and the sun hotter, Jonathan brought Nancy a letter from Mrs. Finnegan. Enclosed in it was a cable from her father telling her that he had booked passage on the _Tourraine_, leaving Le Havre within two days. "Oh," Nancy cried aloud, "he is _coming home_!" So intent was she upon her letter that she did not see the rapid approach of a shiny Ford; but at a terrific whirring and grating of wheels and levers she turned, startled. "Love letter?" queried Peter Hyde, jumping from the driver's seat.