Jean nodded. It was something not to be discussed, the light in her father’s face as he had listened. It made her realize more than anything that had happened in the long months of trial in the country, how worth while it was, the sacrifice that had brought him back into his home country for healing and happiness. CHAPTER V JUST A CITY SPARROW Christmas week had already passed when the surprise came. As Kit said the charm of the unexpected was always gripping you unawares when you lived on the edge of Nowhere. Mrs. Newell and Elliott had departed two days after Christmas for Weston. Somehow the girls could not get really acquainted with this new boy cousin. Billie, once won, was a friend for ever, but Elliott was a smiling, confident boy, quiet and resourceful, with little to say. “He overlooks girls,” Helen had said. “It isn’t that he doesn’t like us, but he doesn’t see us. He’s been going to a boys’ school ever since he was seven years old, and all he can think about or talk about is boys. When I told him I didn’t know anything about baseball, he looked at me through his eye glasses so curiously.” “I think he was embarrassed by such a galaxy of the fair cousins,” Kit declared. “He’s lived alone as the sole chick, and he just couldn’t get the right angle on us. Billie says he got along with him all right. He was very polite, girls, anyway. You expect too much of him because Cousin Beth was so nice. If he’d been named Bob or Dave or Billie or Jack, he’d have felt different too. His full name’s Elliott Peabody Newell. I’ll bet a cookie when I have a large family, I’ll never, never give them family names.” “You said you were going to be a bachelor maid forever just the other day.” “Did I? Well, you know about consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds,” Kit retorted calmly. “Since we were over at the Judge’s for Christmas, I’ve decided to marry my childhood love too.” “That’s Billie.” “No, it is not, young lady. Billie is a kindred spirit, an entirely different person from your childhood love. I haven’t got one yet, but after listening to the Judge say those tender things about Cousin Roxy, I’m going to find one or know the reason why.” By this time, Jean had settled down contentedly to the winter régime. She was giving Doris piano lessons, and taking over the extra household duties with Kit back at school. School had been one of the problems to be solved that first year. Doris and Helen went over the hill road to Gayhead District Schoolhouse. It stood at the crossroads, a one story red frame building, with a “leanto” on one side, and a woodshed on the other. Helen had despised it thoroughly until she heard that her father had gone there in his boyhood, and she had found his old desk with his initials carved on it. Anything that Father or Mother had been associated with was forever hallowed in the eyes of the girls.