His discontent with their home now took shape in vigorous action, and Aunt Mandy came to share it. Trip after trip to the Riggsville store was made. Two new chamber sets and rolls of carpeting arrived at the station six miles away, and came up the valley. A paper-hanger was engaged and kept busy for ten days. The death-bed pictures were literally kicked into the cow shed, and in three weeks four rooms had been so reconstructed and fitted anew that no one would recognize them. Meanwhile Uncle Jud had utterly neglected his "craps," while he worked around the house. The wide lawn had been clipped close. A new picket fence, painted white, replaced the leaning, zigzag one around the garden. Weeds and brush disappeared, and only Aunt Mandy's protest saved the picturesque brown house from a coat of paint. And then "Pattycake" arrived. Nearly a year before she had been brought here, a weary, bedraggled, dusty, half-starved waif. Now Uncle Jud met her at the station, his face shining; Aunt Mandy clasped her close to her portly person; and as Chip looked around and saw what had been done in her honor and to make her welcome, her eyes filled. "I never thought anybody would care for me like this," she exclaimed, and then glancing at Uncle Jud, her eyes alight, she threw her arms about his neck and, for the first time, kissed him. And never in all his life had he felt more amply paid for anything he had done. Then and there, Chip resolved to do something that now lay in her power--to face shame and humbled pride and all the sacrifice it meant to her in the end, and reunite these two long-separated brothers. But not now, no, not yet. Before her lay two golden joyous summer months. Aunt Abby was coming up later. She could not face her own humiliation now. She must wait until these happy days were past, then tell her wretched story, not sparing herself one iota, and then, if she must, go her way, an outcast into the world once more.