“Why, that new girl is only learning her a-b-c’s,” said a girl, and her desk-mate turned to her with a quick rebuke.

“Don’t—­she’ll hear you.”

Mavis caught the latter’s eyes that instant, and with a warm glow at her heart looked her gratitude, and then she almost cried her surprise aloud—­it was the stranger-girl who had been in the mountains—­Marjorie.  The girl looked back in a puzzled way, and a moment later Mavis saw her turn to look again.  This time the mountain girl answered with a shy smile, and Marjorie knew her, nodded in a gay, friendly way, and bent her head to her book.

Presently she ran her eyes down the benches where the boys sat, and there was Gray waiting apparently for her to look around, for he too nodded gayly to her, as though he had known her from the start.  The teacher saw the exchange of little civilities and he was much puzzled, especially when, the moment school was over, he saw the lad hurry to catch Marjorie, and the two then turn together toward the little stranger.  Both thrust out their hands, and the little mountain girl, so unaccustomed to polite formalities, was quite helpless with embarrassment, so the teacher went over to help her out and Gray explained: 

“Marjorie and I stayed with her grandfather, and didn’t we have a good time, Marjorie?”

Marjorie nodded with some hesitation, and Gray went on: 

“How—­how is he now?”

“Grandpap’s right peart now.”

“And how’s your cousin—­Jason?”

The question sent such a sudden wave of homesickness through Mavis that her answer was choked, and Marjorie understood and put her arm around Mavis’s shoulder.

“You must be lonely up here.  Where do you live?” And when she tried to explain Gray broke in.

“Why, you must be one of our ten—­you must live on our farm.  Isn’t that funny?”

“And I live further down the road across the pike,” said Marjorie.

“In that great big house in the woods?”

“Yes,” nodded Marjorie, “and you must come to see me.”

Mavis’s eyes had the light of gladness in them now, and through them looked a grateful heart.  Outside, Gray got Marjorie’s pony for her, the two mounted, rode out the gate and went down the pike at a gallop, and Marjorie whirled in her saddle to wave her bonnet back at the little mountaineer.  The teacher, who stood near watching them, turned to go back and close up the school-house.

“I’m coming to see your father, and we’ll get some books, and you are going to study so hard that you won’t have time to get homesick any more,” he said kindly, and Mavis started down the road, climbed the staked and ridered fence, and made her way across the fields.  She had been lonely, and now homesickness came back to her worse than ever.  She wondered about Jason—­where he was and what he was doing and whether she would ever see him again.  The memory of her parting with him came back to her—­how he looked as she saw him for the last time sitting on his old nag, sturdy and apparently unmoved, and riding out of her sight in just that way; and she heard again his last words as though they were sounding then in her ears: