"To say thank you is a little thing, to feel thanks warmly through you is a bigger. I carry that warmth with me for the rest of my life--and there was a time when I was not only glad because I was going back to my own country, but because I was leaving Redlands. Now that is not so. I leave Redlands with regret, but I shall carry in my heart the memory of it, and of you all. And that is something to bring back with me to a home from which a little girl, as young as Tiddles, was driven more than fifty years ago. Now that I am so near going back, I dare again allow myself to see the picture of the burning château, the flames rising behind the trees, and my nursery a blackened shell, as the front wall fell forward. I see my cot against the wall, my doll's house, black with flaming edge ... myself crying pitifully, but at the same time thankful to my father who permitted me to bury my cherished dolls in the hole he had dug to preserve our heirlooms from the conquering German. My father himself fired the château that no German should pollute it, and went out homeless into the wide world, deserting all, sooner than live under German rule. I kissed my little hands to my beloved dolls, down in the garden mould, whispering, with the faith of childhood, that I would soon come back and dig them up again. And after one-and-fifty years I keep that promise. I go back alone, the last of all my family, to the home of my childhood; but I shall not be lonely in that I take with me the love of the Lower School." * * * * * After that came dinner, a hasty and somewhat noisy affair, when mistresses made no particular effort to keep order, and no one talked of anything but the Election. Ingrid and Gabrielle came in rather late; Joey tried to catch Gabrielle's eye and show her there was room to squeeze in between herself and Noreen; but Gabrielle, looking flushed and excited, only smiled at her in answer to the invitation, and sat down at the far end of the table. And after dinner there was the scramble to dress, to the tune of rumbling wheels and snorting cars, as the old girls and the more ordinary visitors poured up in an unending stream. Then the prize-giving--one side of the Queen's Hall entirely filled with excited girls in best frocks, the other with visitors of all ages; old girls conspicuous among them by their proprietary air. The school list read, as it would stand with the beginning of the new term, going from the babies in the kindergarten up to the high and mighty Sixth. Noreen and Joey in Remove II. A. Gabrielle in the Upper School, the youngest girl there by a whole year. Barbara heading Remove II. B. Syb second. The prospects for the next term were great indeed, with the junior hockey team colours for Joey and Noreen, to add to all the rest.