"No matter," he answered, airily. "I have no curiosity whatsoever. It's a trait of character entirely lacking in my make-up." Then he motioned toward Mary, who was sitting in a hammock, cutting the pages of a new magazine. "Does _she_ know?" Joyce nodded, and feeling that they meant her, Mary looked up inquiringly. Rob beckoned to her ingratiatingly. "Come into the garden, Maud," he said in a low tone. "I would have speech with thee." Laughing at his foolishness, but in a flutter of pleasure, Mary sprang up to follow him to the rustic seat midway down the avenue. As Joyce's parting glance had not forbidden it, she was soon answering his questions to the best of her ability. "You see," he explained, "it's not out of curiosity that I ask all this. It's simply as a means of precaution. I can't keep myself out of hot water unless I know how the land lies." That last day of the house-party seemed the shortest of all. Betty and Miles Bradford strolled over to Tanglewood and sat for more than an hour on the shady stile leading into the churchyard. Lloyd and Phil went for a last horseback ride, and Mary, watching them canter off together down the avenue, wondered curiously if he would have anything more to say about the bit of turquoise and all it stood for. As she followed Joyce up-stairs to help her pack her trunk, a little wave of homesickness swept over her. Not that she wanted to go back to the Wigwam, but to have Joyce go away without her was like parting with the last anchor which held her to her family. It gave her a lonely set-adrift feeling to be left behind. She took her sister's parting injunctions and advice with a meekness that verged so nearly on tears that Joyce hastened to change the subject. "Think of all the things I'll have to tell you about when I get back from the seashore. Only two short months,--just eight little weeks,--but I'm going to crowd them so full of glorious hard work that I'll accomplish wonders. There'll be no end of good times, too: clambakes and fishing and bathing to fill up the chinks in the days, and the story-telling in the evenings around the driftwood fires. It will be over before we know it, and I'll be back here ready to take you home before you have time to really miss me." Cheered by Joyce's view of the subject, Mary turned her back a moment till she had winked away the tears that had begun to gather, then straightway started out to make the most of the eight little weeks left to her at The Locusts. When she went with the others to the station "to give the house-party on wheels a grand send-off," as Kitty expressed it, her bright little face was so happy that it brought a smiling response from every departing guest. "Good-by, Miss Mary," Miles Bradford said, cordially, coming up to her in the waiting-room. "The Pilgrim Father has much to thank you for. You have helped him to store up some very pleasant memories of this happy Valley."