A sense of buoyancy bore her up. Her feet touched the grass of the meadow as if it had been full of springs. She lost the consciousness of her great weariness. Her soul had found wings. She was walking into a crimson path of the sunset, and April was in her lungs. How good to be away from the smell of pork chops and hot cabbage, the steam of potatoes and Gene Massey’s voice. Never, never would she go back. Not for all the things she had left behind. They were few. She was glad she had her few little trinkets. They were all that mattered anyway. Except the fur neckpiece. It went hard to lose that. The last thing Aunt Mary bought her. Of course it would have been wiser to wait to pack. There were her two good gingham dresses, and two others that were faded, but she would need things to work in, and there was the little pink Georgette that Aunt Mary bought her last summer! She hated to lose that. But Aunt Mary, if she could see would quite understand, and if she could not see it could all be explained in heaven some day. There would be no use sending to Nannette or Gene for anything. They would never send her a rag that belonged to her. There would be inconveniences of course, her hair-brush, her tooth brush--but what were they? And then, quite suddenly as she climbed the fence, and stood in a long, white road winding away over a hill, the sun which had been slipping, slipping down lower and lower, went out of sight and left only a ruby light behind, and all about the world looked gray. The sweet smells were there, and the wonderful cool air to touch her brow lightly like that hand of her mother so long ago, just as it touched and called her in the kitchen a few minutes before, but the bright world was growing quiet at the approaching night, and suddenly Joyce began to wonder where she was going. Automobiles were coming and going hurriedly as if the people in them were going home to dinner, and they smiled and talked joyously as they passed her, and looked at her casually, a girl walking alone in the twilight with her hat in her hand. Joyce came to herself and put on her hat, she put her papers together in a book, and the books under her arm, and slipped the strap of her handbag over her wrist. She went on walking down the road toward the pink and gold of the sunset and wondered where she was going, and then, as she lifted her eyes she saw a star slip faintly out in the clear space between the ruby and rose, as if to remind her that One above was watching and had not forgotten her. CHAPTER II