Wilford had not been expected, and the expression of the deacon’s face was not a very cordial greeting to the young man who hastened to explain that he was going directly on to Boston. In his presence the deacon was not quite natural, but he lifted in his arms his “little Katy-did,” and looked straight into her face, where there were as yet no real lines of care, only shadows, which told that in some respects she was not the same Katy he had parted with two years before. There was a good deal of the _city_ about her dress and style; and the deacon felt a little overawed at first; but this wore off as, on their way to the farm-house, she talked to him in her old, loving manner, and asked questions about the people he supposed she had forgotten, nodding to everybody she met, whether she knew them or not, and at last, as the old house came in sight, hiding her face in a gush of happy tears upon his neck. Scarcely waiting for old Whitey to stop, but with one leap clearing the wheel, she threw herself into the midst of the women waiting on the door step to meet her. It was a joyful meeting, and when the first excitement was over, Katy inspected the improvements, praising them all and congratulating herself upon the nice time she was to have. “You don’t know what a luxury it is to feel that I can rest,” she said to Helen. “Didn’t you rest at New London?” Helen asked. “Yes, some,” Katy replied; “but there were dances every night, or sails upon the bay, and I had to go, for many of our friends were there, and Wilford was not willing for me to be quiet.” This, then, was the reason why Katy came home so weary and pale, and craving so much the rest she had not had in more than two years. But she would get it now, and before the first dinner was eaten some of her old color came stealing back to her cheeks, and her eyes began to dance just as they used to do, while her merry voice rang out in silvery peals at Aunt Betsy’s quaint remarks, which struck her so forcibly from not having heard them for so long a time. Freed from the restraint of her husband’s presence, she came back at once to what she was when a young, careless girl she sat upon the door-steps and curled the dandelion stalks. She did not do this now, for there were none to curl; but she strung upon a thread the delicate petals of the phlox growing by the door, and then bound it as a crown about the head of her mother, who could not quite recognize her Katy in the elegant Mrs. Wilford Cameron, with rustling silk, and diamonds flashing on her hands every time they moved. But when she saw her racing with the old brown goat and its little kid out in the apple orchard, her head uncovered, and her bright curls blowing about her face, the feeling disappeared, and she felt that Katy had indeed come back again.