"Happy! I hate it. As J. G. says, I hate it like--well, I just hate it," she concluded, with propriety, if a little lamely. Something in the look she cast around the warm, clean kitchen struck the woman suddenly. "You don't mean you'd rather live here--_here_?" she exclaimed amazedly. "Don't you like it?" queried Madeline sharply. Mrs. Winterpine considered a moment. "You see, it's my home," she began. The girl's dry laugh interrupted her. "That's just it. It's your home," she repeated. "We haven't any. That's the idea. What's the use of traveling if you can't come home? And we can't, ever. Unless we go back to the Klondike," she added satirically. There was a long pause. It seemed that the girl was slowly undressing herself before them: travel and money and gold bag and scented linings slipped from her like so many petticoats and left her thin and cold between them, warm as they were in their solid homespun of kin and hearth. Lean and empty, a houseless, flitting, little shadow, she had scoured the world and sat now, envious, by a kitchen fire. How strange! Mrs. Winterpine gathered the dishes with accustomed hands and piled them by a pan of hot, soapy water. Caroline, sobered, rose to help her with the instinctive courtesy of the home-trained child, but drew back at her shaken head and waving finger, and followed her glance toward her other guest, who stared morosely into the dooryard, her chin in her ringed, brown hand. She was evidently not far from tears--in a nervous crisis. "I wonder if you'd help me with these dishes, Madeline?" said the woman quietly, and with a start the girl rose, stood meekly while a checked apron was tied about her waist and received the moist, shining ware from the plump hands without a word. She appeared to have utterly forgotten Caroline. After a few moments of rhythmical click and splash, a few journeys from sink to dresser, the tension broke quietly and the air was aware of it, as when a threatened thunderstorm goes by above and dissipates in wind. Feeling this, Mrs. Winterpine began to talk softly, half to herself it seemed, for her voice took on the tone of one who is much alone and thinks aloud. "All my life I've been crazy for travel. I used to read my geography book till I wore it out nearly; the exports and the imports, you know? And the pictures of those Arabian men with white turbans, and the South Sea Islanders riding on surf boards--I can see 'em now. There was a castle for Germany, with the moon behind it and the Rhine--do you know 'Bingen on the Rhine'? I love the sound of that. And the Black Forest! Think of it!" She paused with a platter dripping in her hand, her eyes fixed; and so strong was the compulsion of her vision that to Caroline, vibrant as a wind harp to such suggestion, the splash of the water in the tin was the very tinkle of Undine's mystic stream and _Kuehleborn_, that wicked uncle-brook dashed in cold floods over the belated knight in the dark German wood!