“It’s Dan Peckham, isn’t it?” he said.  “Yours is the first voice to welcome me home, Dan.”

Mr. Peckham insisted on their waiting a moment while he hurried up to the house to call Elvira.  Kit sat back in the carriage enjoying the reunion.  Miss Daphne had gone to school years before at the Select Academy for Young Ladies, over in Willimantic, with Elvira Evans long before she became Mrs. Peckham.  Kit felt, listening to the four of them go over dear old reminiscences, that it was as though she stood at the curtain of the past, on tiptoe at a peep-hole.

The early twilight had already begun to set in by the time they reached the turn of the road below the Greenacre entrance gates.  On the silent, frosty air, Kit heard Shad’s clear whistle, and over the fringe of pines along the river there came the murmur of the waterfall.  There was none of the family in sight when they turned up the drive, but suddenly Kit’s eager eyes saw a familiar figure out by the chicken coops, and leaning forward she gave a shrill co-oee!

Doris’ head went up like a startled deer.  She dropped the pan of feed to the ground and fairly flew to meet them, and then before Kit could even detach herself from these clinging arms, the big front door swung open, and there in the lamplight was the Mother Bird and Helen.

Jean was up-stairs as usual at this hour when she was home, reading with her father, but Kit never forgot the feeling of relief that came to her when she finally found herself before the open fire in the big living-room with all of the family around her, and the full satisfaction of having brought home the Peabodys after all these years of estrangement.

That night, after dinner, while Shad and the Dean were closeted in the big front room erecting the huge hemlock Christmas tree, the girls assembled in Jean’s room.

“Cousin Roxy invited us all over to their place,” Helen said, as she dove into a lower bureau drawer, filled with carefully wrapped parcels, “but mother wanted to have a home Christmas, because the house does seem new to us all, and we never expected to see you home at all.”

“You didn’t?  Well, I wrote and told you to be sure and have the guest chamber ready.  I didn’t know myself that Uncle Cassius and Aunt Daphne were coming until the last minute.”  Kit sat perched on the bed in a pink kimono, brushing her hair.  And just at this moment she caught Jean’s eye in the mirror, such an amused, knowing eye that Kit caught the full significance of that glance immediately, and laughed.

“I suppose you feel as though you had brought home the wealth of the Indies, Kit Robbins.  You can’t tell me that it wasn’t intentional, because I know you.  All I want to know is, who told you?”

“Told me what?” asked Kit innocently.  Not for worlds would she have betrayed Cousin Roxy’s confidence.  “Any one to hear you talk, Jean, would think that you didn’t want to see me at all.”