"I shall not miss those things a bit," averred Jack. "It has been mighty interesting to see and I have enjoyed it down to the ground, but me for the old U.S.," she added slangily.
"I shall not be sorry, myself, to get back," Mary Lee agreed with Jack.
"I had seen all that I wanted before you all started off on that frantic trip to the western coast," Jean declared.
Nan smiled blissfully. She had yet to make her confession to the three. "I wouldn't have missed that for anything," she said. "I shall always remember it as the happiest time of my life."
Jean, who had not yet been given an inkling of what was in the wind, stared at her. "You must like hard travel, then," she remarked. "Jack has been telling me of that awful jaunt to Sakusa and how you were all used up afterward. I don't see where there was any great bliss in that."
Nan smiled down at her. "Jean, dear, and all of you, I have something to tell you. I would have told you, Mary Lee and Jack, before, but I had a feeling that mother must know first. I am going to marry Neal Harding."
"Maybe you think we are surprised," scoffed Jack. "Why, you old fraud, the fact was written on your face on that very day of our wild trip to Sakusa, wasn't it, Mary Lee?"
"You certainly bore all the hall-marks of an affianced maiden," Mary Lee assured her sister.
"Never mind, Nan," Jean spoke up. "I am surprised, and I am pleased, too. It will be lovely to have a brother."
"What's the matter with Cart?" asked Jack indignantly.