never uses them.”  A little further down she came upon a filmy white dress and a veil fastened onto a wreath.  Then she knew.  This was her aunt’s wedding outfit—­the garments she had fashioned in her girlhood in preparation for the marriage which was destined never to take place.  A week before the wedding the bridegroom-to-be had run away with another girl.  The pathos of Aunt Phoebe’s blighted romance struck Hinpoha “amidships” as Sahwah would have expressed it, and she wept over the linens in the cedar chest.  Poor Aunt Phoebe!  No wonder she was sour and crabbed.  Hinpoha forgave her all her crossness and tartness of manner, and thought of her only with pity.  Her romantic nature thrilled at the thought of the blighted love affair and her aunt became a sort of heroine in her eyes.  She yearned to comfort her and make her happy.

Downstairs Aunt Phoebe sat with a letter in her hand.  It was from Aunt Grace, Hinpoha’s mother’s sister, out in California.  Aunt Grace had no children and was lonely, and was asking if Hinpoha could come and live with her.  Aunt Phoebe pondered.  Of late there had been growing on her a conviction that she was not a suitable person to bring up a young girl.  She certainly had not succeeded in making her grandniece love her.  Aunt Phoebe really was lonely and she did care for Hinpoha, but she did not know how to make her care for her.  Her experiment had been a failure.  Well, she would send Hinpoha out to California with her Aunt Grace, whom Hinpoha adored, and she would live on by herself.  The prospect suddenly seemed rather dismal and she confessed that Hinpoha had been a great deal of company for her, but she would not stand in the way of her happiness.  Her mind was made up.  She pictured the joy with which Hinpoha would receive the news and it brought her another pang.

At the supper table she told Hinpoha that after school was out she was to go West and live with Aunt Grace, and then sat cynically watching the unbelieving delight which flashed into her face at this announcement.  But after the first flush of rapture Hinpoha reconsidered.  In her mind’s eye she saw Aunt Phoebe living on alone, unloving and unloved, to a lonesome old age.  Again she saw the cedar chest with its pathetic wedding garments.  Again the words of the fire song came into her mind.

“Do I have to go to Aunt Grace’s?” she asked.

“Not unless you want to,” said her aunt, wondering.

“Then I think I’d rather stay with you,” said Hinpoha.

“Do you really mean it?” asked Aunt Phoebe incredulously.  The ice was melting in her heart and something was beginning to sing.  Hinpoha slipped out of her chair, and, going around behind Aunt Phoebe, put her arms around her neck.  The gate of Aunt Phoebe’s heart swung wide open.  Reaching out her arms, she drew Hinpoha down into her lap.  “My dear little girl,” she said, “my dear little girl!”

And the Desert of Waiting suddenly blossomed with a thousand roses, and Hinpoha saw lying fair before her in the sunlight the City of her Heart’s Desire.