Soon we came up, and there were the girls, wonderful, lithe, sunburned, radiant, hatless, golden hair streaming in the golden light at the end of day, arms extended, white teeth gleaming, measureless, ineffable, in the beauty and wonder of their young womanhood! We sprang from the wagon and--I don't know how it happened--Jean ran straight into my arms. Not Marjorie--I didn't see what became of her--I didn't stop to look;--Jean ran straight into my arms! I held her there, held her with the strength of ten weeks' harvesting in my muscles and of all my young hot boyhood in my veins; held her and kissed her and would not let her go. . . For the first time since we had been little children together, playing by the dam where the water-wheel across the river tossed its dancing diamonds in the air, I held her and kissed her and would not let her go. Across the fields of crisp and brittle grass we trudged together, disregarding the trail and the measureless swoon of that sunset world as we swept homeward on the flood-tide of our happiness. Her firm little arm pressed tight against mine and our limbs swung together in the rhythm of our stride. And when I looked down in her face I saw a light that was not altogether the glint of the setting sun. But in that most poetic moment of her life Jean forgot to be poetic. Once more she slipped her arm about me. "Gee, it's good to have you home again," she said. And in what should have been my supreme hour I found myself wondering whether Jean's passion was love or just plain loneliness. CHAPTER XII. That was a busy night on Fourteen. The girls confessed that they had been on the lookout for us since the first of the month. They had even borrowed Spoof's field glass so that they could sweep the horizon to the eastward far beyond Mrs. Alton's. "He's the strangest sort of chap, is Spoof," said Jean. "Will you believe me, he hasn't been inside this house since you left? Used to walk over from time to time, and see that the pigs and the cow were living in harmony, and that the fuel had not given out, but was always in a rush home again. Never saw such a man for work; quite different from what he used to be." Jack looked his sister over with an eye that did not reserve all its approval for Marjorie. "We thought you would have been an accomplished banjo-ist by now," he said. "Not a lesson--not a single lesson in all this time," Jean grumbled. "And now I suppose he'll be over to-morrow to indulge us with the pent-up leisure of two months!" Jean's naiveté was little greater than mine. We had been brought up with a sound training in the rudiments of behavior but with little knowledge of its social complexities. My feeling in the matter was a mixed sense of surprise that our neighbour, usually so friendly, had held aloof at a time when he was particularly needed, and of annoyance that Jean should be so obviously put out about it.