It was a sort of nostalgia that took her then for the country she had never known, not Country Club country, nor the conscious, well-kept wildness of the parks which give the old river town its only claim to beauty--but simple wood and meadow and field, where homely folk live close to the soil they till, concerned with crops and the breeding season. It was this country her father had meant when he bragged about Kentucky. It is this country which, deep down under the surface things, means home to all people of Saxon blood, no matter how far astray they wander.... And as she lay there, as if her wistful thoughts had conjured it into being, came a whisper of song from the leaves of the magnolia tree just outside her window; a murmur that died away, and began again, and rose and soared, melody on wings, above the clang of a trolley-car and the honk of passing motors. It was a mocking-bird, that voice of the Southern summer, singing in the glare of the arc-lamps, mistaking it perhaps for moonlight. Joan tiptoed to the window and listened, an aching lump in her throat. It was her first mocking-bird; she had not known they sang at night. "You lovely thing!" she whispered to it. "What are you doing in this place?... And what am _I_?" Then and there she made her plans to get away. The thought frightened her a little. She had, despite the ups and downs of her father's fortunes, led hitherto a very sheltered life. Fortunately there was her mother's money, hers whenever she chose to ask for it. She would not be quite penniless. But where to go? She thought first of the Misses Darcy, her father's cousins, who had been most affectionate and kind, particularly since her father's remarriage. Sometimes she wondered whether this was because they sympathized with her, or (with a touch of her new cynicism) because they did not. Effie May had been very generous to the Misses Darcy, remarking once that she knew what it was to be poor herself. They came frequently to dine at her lavish table; they appeared occasionally in _chic_ black costumes, as good as new, which Joan recognized as having served to mourn the late Mr. Calloway; the limousine was often at their disposal; and a limousine with a liveried chauffeur was a touch of distinction hitherto lacking to the Darcy fortunes, even at their palmiest. Joan suddenly doubted whether her father's cousins would welcome her under their roof at the risk of alienating that limousine. She did not blame them--poor, anxious ladies to whom life had not been very kind. She simply realized that they were of her father's blood, not her mother's.