"Lav, you're wonderful--the way you understand." Sidney's responsive mood leaped out to the boy's. Lavender had found something in her that was above his estimation of girls. And _she_ had been vouchsafed a glimpse into the heart that lay beneath the crooked body--with its sensitiveness, its ambition. "We're just like pals," she finished shyly, "And I'm as proud as can be." Mentally she was resolving to live true to Lavender's standard. _That_ would be much finer than to try to be like Mart. In her effort to attain Mart's showy independence she had--almost--come to grief, not quite. Lavender seemed certain that Aunt Achsa would want her to stay. And he had said he would go with her while she apologized which would make it as easy as could be. "Let's go now!" she said aloud, unmindful of the fact that Lavender could not possibly be following her high flight of thought. "Where?" "Home--to Aunt Achsa." Sidney said it very simply. And to her it seemed like home, now. With a warm feeling in her heart she thought of herself as truly belonging to them all and to Sunset Lane and the homely cottage. "All right." With a dexterous motion Lavender swung his strength into the oars. The dory cut the shining water. Sidney stared solemnly straight ahead, going over in her mind just what she would say to Aunt Achsa. At sight of the two Aunt Achsa paused in one of her multitudinous tasks. It was not usual for either the boy or the girl to appear until noontime. Her first thought was an anxiety that something had happened. She fluttered out to meet them. "There ain't anything happened, has there?" her fond eyes on Lavender. "I'll say something's _most_ happened," the boy began. "Sidney here thinks she ought to go home on account of something she said yesterday--" "Lav, let me do it," implored Sidney. "Aunt Achsa, I--I'm so ashamed of the way I answered you yesterday about my hair. I ought to have told you--you had a right--but I guess I wanted to feel grown up and independent. And I am sorry." At Sidney's halting confession Aunt Achsa looked what Lavender, with his odd coinage of words, had described as the "most forgivingest person." She actually blushed. "Why, law's sake, child, your Aunt Ascha didn't mind--don't worry your little head over that. I ain't forgotten how a girl feels even if it was a long spell ago that I was fifteen. Old as I am my tongue gets loose in my head lots of times and runs away with itself. That's a way tongues has of doing. And you worryin' over it and thinkin' about going home! Why, why--it's _nice_ to have you here. Only last evening I said it to Mr. Dugald. It's like you were one of us--" "Do you really mean that, Aunt Achsa? I'm not company any more or--or--a distant cousin?" "Not a bit. And now long's you and Lavender's come home in the middle of the morning, which I will say give me a turn, you can set down on the step out there and pit these cherries for me!" "Cherry pie?" cried Sidney, glad over everything.