"I've come as I promised to, Aunt Dorrie. It--it wasn't my chance! Not my big chance, anyhow, but I had to find out, dearie." "My little girl!" Joan went nearer; she bent and kissed again and again that radiant face; then, sitting on the floor by the couch, with Cuff huddled close, she touched lightly the high peaks that lay between the parting and this home-coming, but Doris, with that deep understanding, followed laboriously, silently, through the dark valleys. "I'm rather battered and cropped, Aunt Dorrie--but here I am!" With this Joan tossed off her hat and voluminous coat. "Your--hair, Joan? Your beautiful hair!" "I have been very sick, Aunt Dorrie, my hair and my fat had to go--just enough bones left to hold my soul. But I'm all right now." "Don't be sorry for me," Joan was pleading, "I'm the gladdest thing alive to-day. I've dropped all the old husks; I've found out just what they are worth, but some of them that seem like husks, dear, are not--I've learned that, too." "Yes, Joan--and now go on, in just your own way. For a little while I have you to myself. Nancy will take lunch at Uncle David's new bungalow." There was a good deal of explanation necessary in dealing with Sylvia's part in the past--Doris had banked on Sylvia. The tea room was easier, but Joan slipped over that experience so glibly that Doris made a mental reservation concerning it. Patricia was the critical test. At the mention of her name Cuff whined pathetically, and Joan bent and gathered him in her arms. "I--I can't talk much about Pat, dearie, not now"; Joan bent her head; "she was so wonderful. Just a beautiful, lost spirit in the world--trying to find its way home. There was only one way for Pat--I shall always be glad that I could go part of it with her." "Yes, yes--I am glad, too!" Doris whispered, for she had caught up with Joan now. She did not know all that lay in the valleys--but she felt the chill and darkness through which her child had come up to the light. Strange as it might seem, she was thinking of that time, long ago, when she had escaped from the Park and had touched life in the open. The hospital experience Joan could describe with a touch of humour that eventually brought a smile to Doris's face. She took for granted that it had been in Chicago, and when Joan told of flitting away from the young doctor who had saved her, Doris laughingly said: "Joan, that was cruel. You should have explained." "No, Aunt Dorrie, it was wise. Of course I'm going to explain to him and send him the money, but I wanted to shut the door on my silly past first. I shall only let in, hereafter, that part of it that I choose. When I saw a man looking at me, Aunt Dorrie, where before I had been seeing a doctor, there was nothing to do but scamper. He hadn't the least idea what was happening--he saw only the bag of bones that he had rescued, but I wasn't going to let him run any risks. You see, I've learned more than some girls."