“Stuff!” laughed Kit, merrily. “Sit thee down, my sister, and let me turn thee into a radiant beauty.” Laughingly, Jean was taken away from her sewing and planted before the oval mirror. The smooth brown plaits were taken down and Kit deftly brushed her hair high on her head, rolled it, patted it, put in big shell pins, and fluffed out the sides around the ears. “Now you look like Mary Lavinia Peabody and Dolly Madison and the Countess Potocka.” “Do I?” Jean surveyed herself dubiously. “Well, I like the braids best, and I’d never get it up like that by myself. I shall be individual and not a slave to any mode. You know what Hiram used to say about his plaid necktie, ‘Them as don’t like it can lump it for all of me.’” The second week in January Shad drove Princess down to the station with Jean and her two suitcases tucked away on the back seat. Mr. Briggs glanced up in bold surprise when her face appeared at the ticket window. “Ain’t leaving us, be you?” “Just for a week or two. New York, please.” “New York? Well, well.” He turned and fished leisurely for a ticket from the little rack on the side wall. “Figuring on visiting friends or maybe relatives, I shouldn’t wonder?” “A girl friend.” Jean couldn’t bear to sidestep Mr. Briggs’s friendly interest in the comings and goings of the Robbins family. “Miss Crane.” “Oh, yes, Miss Crane. Same one you sent down that box to by express before Christmas. Did she get it all right?” “Yes, thanks.” “I kind of wondered what was in it. Nothing that rattled, and it didn’t feel heavy.” He looked out at her meditatively, but just then the train came along and Jean had to hurry away without appeasing Mr. Briggs’s thirst for information. It was strange, the sensation of adventure that came over her as the little two coach local train wound its way around the hills down towards New London. The unexpected, as she had said once, always brought the greatest thrill, and she had put from her absolutely any hope of a trip away from home so that now it came as a double pleasure. It was late afternoon and the sunshine lay in a hazy glow of red and gold over the russet fields. There was no sign of snow yet. The land lay in a sort of sleepy stillness, without wind or sound of birds, waiting for the real winter. On the hillsides the laurel bushes kept their deep green lustre, the winter ferns reared brave fresh tinted fronds above the dry leaf mold. On withered goldenrod stalks tiny brown Phoebe birds clung, hunting for stray seed pods. Here and there rose leisurely from a pine grove a line of crows, flying low over the bare fields.