"When you been home last, Lucy Ann?" asked he.
A little flush came into her face, and she winked bravely.
"I ain't been home at all," said she, in a low tone. "Not sence August."
John groped vainly in mental depths for other experiences likely to illuminate this. He concluded that he had not quite understood Lucy Ann and her feeling about home; but that was neither here nor there.
"Well," he remarked, rising to go, "you're gittin' to be quite a visitor."
"I'm tryin' to learn how," said Lucy Ann, almost gayly. "I've been a-cousinin' so long, I sha'n't know how to do anything else."
But now the middle of November had come, and she was again in her own house. Cousin Titcomb had brought her there and driven away, concerned that he must leave her in a cold kitchen, and only deterred by a looming horse-trade from staying to build a fire. Lucy Ann bade him good-by, with a gratitude which was not for her visit, but all for getting home; and when he uttered that terrifying valedictory known as "coming again," she could meet it cheerfully. She even stood in the door, watching him away; and not until the rattle of his wheels had ceased on the frozen road, did she return to her kitchen and stretch her shawled arms pathetically upward.
"I thank my heavenly Father!" said Lucy Ann, with the fervency of a great experience.
She built her fire, and then unpacked her little trunk, and hung up the things in the bedroom where her mother's presence seemed still to cling.
"I'll sleep here now," she said to herself. "I won't go out of this no more."