She looked pale and appeared to see no one; but, leaping to the ground, sprang up the steps, touched Katherine on the arm, saying briefly, “Come!” then fled inside the house.

Everyone wondered at her strange behavior, and Katherine immediately followed her to her room.

The moment she appeared Jennie caught her in her arms and swung to the door.

“Katherine!  Katherine!” she cried, breathlessly, “I’m found!—­I’m found!—­I’m not a ’stray waif’—­I’m not lost any longer—­I’m—­I’m--”

She could say no more-her breath was spent; her emotion mastered her—­and, bowing her head on her companion’s shoulder, she burst into passionate weeping that shook her from head to foot.

Katherine held her in a close, loving embrace for a moment, then gently forced her into a rocker and knelt beside her, still keeping her arms around her, while she worked mentally for dominion and harmony.

But the flood-gates were open wide.  The pent-up yearnings of years were let loose, and it was some time before the storm began to abate.

Once or twice she attempted to say something, then lapsed into fresh weeping, her self-control strangely shattered; for Jennie had seldom been known to shed tears in the presence of others, even under great pressure.

“Hush!” at length commanded Katherine, with gentle authority; “be still and know who has you in His care.”

“That’s pa-part of it!—­to—­to think that I—­I didn’t ‘know’; and now it has c-come when I never really had f-f-faith to be-believe it would.  I—­do-don’t d-deserve it,” sobbed the girl, with another helpless outburst.

While Katherine is patiently waiting and working for the return of a more tranquil frame of mind, let us take a backward glance and follow Jennie on her eventful trip to Boston.

Upon her arrival in town she went directly to the store to which she had been directed and where her order was immediately filled; then finding that she had more than an hour on her hands before her train would go, she left her package to be called for and slipped into a large department store, to look at some pictures that had been recently and extensively advertised in the papers.

But before reaching the room where they were on exhibition, she was attracted another way, by seeing a crowd of people standing before an alcove that had been curtained off, and where a so-called “transformation scene” was being enacted before admiring and wondering observers.

She had never seen anything of the kind and stood like one entranced, while an exquisite marble statue, representing a beautiful girl holding a basket of flowers in her hands, slowly and mysteriously took on a lifelike appearance, until at length she stood a living, breathing maiden, smiling brightly into the faces around her, while her basket of flowers had also been changed to a cradle of bulrushes, in the midst of which lay an infant reaching up eager hands to the lovely woman above him.