Hours later, from a red-plush, Pullmanless train, Elliott Cameron stepped down to three people--a tall, dark, surprisingly pretty girl a little older than herself, a chunky girl of twelve, and a middle-sized, freckle-faced boy. The boy took her bag and asked for her trunk-checks quite as well as any of her other cousins could have done and the tall girl kissed her and said how glad they were to have the chance to know her. "I am Laura," she said, "and here is Gertrude; and Henry will bring up your trunks to-morrow, unless you need them to-night. Mother sent you her love. Oh, we're so glad to have you come!" Then it is to be feared that Elliott perjured herself. Her all-day journey had not in the least reconciled her to the situation; if anything, she was feeling more bewildered and put out than when she started. But surprise and dismay had not routed her desire to please. She smiled prettily as her glance swept the welcoming faces, and kissed the girls and handed the boy two bits of pasteboard, and said--Oh, Elliott!--how delighted she was to see them at last. You would never have dreamed from Elliott's lips that she was not overjoyed at the chance to come to Highboro and become acquainted with cousins that she had never known. But Laura, who was wiser than she looked, noticed that the new-comer's eyes were not half so happy as her tongue. Poor dear, thought Laura, how pretty she was and how daintily patrician and charming! But her father was on his way to France! And though he went in civilian capacity and wasn't in the least likely to get hurt, when they were seated in the car Laura leaned over and kissed her new cousin again, with the recollection warm on her lips of empty, anxious days when she too had waited for the release of the cards announcing safe arrivals overseas. Elliott, who was every minute realizing more fully the inexorableness of the fact that she was where she was and not where she wasn't, kissed back without much thought. It was her nature to kiss back, however she might feel underneath, and the surprising suddenness of the whole affair had left her numb. She really hadn't much curiosity about the life into which she was going. What did it matter, since she didn't intend to stay in it? Just as soon as the quarantine was lifted from Uncle James's house she meant to go back to Cedarville. But she did notice that the little car was not new, that on their way through the town every one they met bowed and smiled, that Henry had amazingly good manners for a country boy, that Laura looked very strong, that Gertrude was all hands and elbows and feet and eyes, and that the car was continually either climbing up or sliding down hills. It slid out of the village down a hill, and it was climbing a hill when it met squarely in the road a long, low, white house, canopied by four big elms set at the four corners, and gave up the ascent altogether with a despairing honk-honk of its horn.