All this time I hadn’t heard a word from home, and, for all I knew, Stephen might be dead and buried.  I didn’t feel so very light-hearted, you may be sure, when one day Miss Talbot brought me a letter.  It was from mother, and it seemed Stephen’d only had a bad fever, and had been up and gone home for more than a week.  So I wrote back, as soon as I could, all about John, and how he’d gone to sea again, and how Miss Talbot, who set sights by John, was rather lonely, and I thought I’d keep her company a little longer, and try a spell in the mills, seeing that our neighbors didn’t think a girl had been properly accomplished till she’d had a term or two in the factory.  The fact was, I didn’t want to go home just then; I thought, maybe, if I waited a bit, my face would get back to looking as it used to.  So I worked in the piece-room, light work and good pay, sent mother and Lurindy part of my wages, and paid my board to Miss Talbot.  She’d become quite attached to me, and I to her, for all she was such an old-maidish thing; but I’d got to thinking an old maid wasn’t such a very bad thing, after all.  Fourth of July came at last, and the mills were closed, and I went with some of the other girls on an excursion down the harbor; and when I got home, Miss Talbot told me my Cousin Stephen had been down to see me, and had been obliged to go home in the last train.  I wondered why Stephen didn’t stay, and then it flashed upon me that she’d told him all about it, and he didn’t want to see me afterwards.  I knew mother and Lurindy suspected why I didn’t come home, and now, thinks I, they know; but I asked no questions.

When September came, I saw it wasn’t any use delaying, and I might as well go back to knitting sale-socks then as any time.  However, I didn’t go till October.  You needn’t think I’d stayed away from the farm all that time, while the tender things were opening, the tiny top-heavy beans pushing up, the garden-sarse greening, the little grass-blades two and two,—­while all the young creatures were coming forward, the chickens breaking the shell, and the gosling-storm brewing and dealing destruction,—­while the strawberries were growing ripe and red up in the high field, and the hay and clover were getting in,—­you needn’t think I’d stayed away from all that had been pleasant in my life, without many a good heart-ache; and when at last I saw the dear old gray house again, all weather-beaten and homely, standing there with its well-sweep among the elms, I fairly cried.  Mother and Lurindy ran out to meet me, when they saw the stage stop, and after we got into the house it seemed if they would never get done kissing me.  And mother stirred round and made hot cream-biscuits for tea, and got the best china, and we sat up till nigh midnight, talking, and I had to tell everything John did and said and thought and looked, over and over again.

By-and-by I unpacked my trunk, and there was a little parcel in the bottom of it, and I pulled it up.