“I should say so, especially if she is going to keep on giving away her lunch.”

“She lunched with the Bird Woman one day this week.”

“She did!”

“Yes, she lives out by the Limberlost.  You know the Bird Woman works there a great deal, and probably knows her that way.  I think the girl gathers specimens for her.  Ellen says she knows more than the teachers about any nature question that comes up, and she is going to lead all of them in mathematics, and make them work in any branch.”

When Elnora entered the coat room after having had luncheon with Ellen Brownlee there was such a difference in the atmosphere that she could feel it.

“I am almost sorry I have these clothes,” she said to Ellen.

“In the name of sense, why?” cried the astonished girl.

“Every one is so nice to me in them, it sets me to wondering if in time I could have made them be equally friendly in the others.”

Ellen looked at her introspectively.  “I believe you could,” she announced at last.  “But it would have taken time and heartache, and your mind would have been less free to work on your studies.  No one is happy without friends, and I just simply can’t study when I am unhappy.”

That night the Bird Woman made the last trip to the swamp.  Every specimen she possibly could use had been purchased at a fair price, and three additions had been made to the bank book, carrying the total a little past two hundred dollars.  There remained the Indian relics to sell on Saturday, and Elnora had secured the order to furnish material for nature work for the grades.  Life suddenly grew very full.  There was the most excitingly interesting work for every hour, and that work was to pay high school expenses and start the college fund.  There was one little rift in her joy.  All of it would have been so much better if she could have told her mother, and given the money into her keeping; but the struggle to get a start had been so terrible, Elnora was afraid to take the risk.  When she reached home, she only told her mother that the last of the things had been sold that evening.

“I think,” said Mrs. Comstock, “that we will ask Wesley to move that box over here back of the garden for you.  There you are apt to get tolled farther into the swamp than you intend to go, and you might mire or something.  There ought to be just the same things in our woods, and along our swampy places, as there are in the Limberlost.  Can’t you hunt your stuff here?”

“I can try,” said Elnora.  “I don’t know what I can find until I do.  Our woods are undisturbed, and there is a possibility they might be even better hunting than the swamp.  But I wouldn’t have Freckles’s case moved for the world.  He might come back some day, and not like it.  I’ve tried to keep his room the best I could, and taking out the box would make a big hole in one side of it.  Store boxes don’t cost much.  I will have Uncle Wesley buy me one, and set it up wherever hunting looks the best, early in the spring.  I would feel safer at home.”