As the weeks flew by and the letters from Trenton told of the happenings in Maria’s home, it became more and more evident to Jane that the doctor’s advice had been the wisest and best.  Lucy would often devote a page or more of her letters to recalling the comforts of her own room at Yardley, so different from what she was enduring at Trenton, and longing for them to come again.  Parts of these letters Jane read to the doctor, and all of them to Martha, who received them with varying comment.  It became evident, too, that neither the excitement of Bart’s letters, nor the visits of the occasional school friends who called upon them both, nor the pursuit of her new accomplishment, had satisfied the girl.

Jane was not surprised, therefore, remembering the doctor’s almost prophetic words, to learn of the arrival of a letter from Lucy begging Martha to come to her at once for a day or two.  The letter was enclosed in one to Bart and was handed to the nurse by that young man in person.  As he did so he remarked meaningly that Miss Lucy wanted Martha’s visit to be kept a secret from everybody but Miss Jane, “just as a surprise,” but Martha answered in a positive tone that she had no secrets from those who had a right to know them, and that he could write Lucy she was coming next day, and that Jane and everybody else who might inquire would know of it before she started.

She rather liked Bart’s receiving the letter.  As long as that young man kept away from Trenton and confined himself to Warehold, where she could keep her eyes on him, she was content.

To Jane Martha said:  “Oh, bless the darlin’!  She can’t do a day longer without her Martha.  I’ll go in the mornin’.  It’s a little pettin’ she wants—­ that’s all.”

So the old nurse bade Meg good-by, pinned her big gray shawl about her, tied on her bonnet, took a little basket with some delicacies and a pot of jelly, and like a true Mother Hubbard, started off, while Jane, having persuaded herself that perhaps “the surprise” was meant for her, and that she might be welcoming two exiles instead of one the following night, began to put Lucy’s room in order and to lay out the many pretty things she loved, especially the new dressing-gown she had made for her, lined with blue silk—­her favorite color.

All that day and evening, and far into the next afternoon, Jane went about the house with the refrain of an old song welling up into her heart—­one that had been stifled for months.  The thought of the round-about way in which Lucy had sent for Martha did not dull its melody.  That ruse, she knew, came from the foolish pride of youth, the pride that could not meet defeat.  Underneath it she detected, with a thrill, the love of home; this, after all, was what her sister could not do without.  It was not Bart this time.  That affair, as she had predicted and had repeatedly told Martha, had worn itself out and had been replaced by her love of music.  She had simply come to herself once more and would again be her old-time sister and her child.  Then, too—­and this sent another wave of delight tingling through her—­ it had all been the doctor’s doing!  But for his advice she would never have let Lucy go.