"Here she is, Papa Sherwood!" cried Nan, leaping into the front of the big car to "get a strangle hold" around her father's neck. "This is our girl from Rose Ranch, Rhoda Hammond. Isn't she nice?"
"I—I can't see her, Nan," said her father. "Whew! let me get my breath and my eyesight back."
Then he welcomed Rhoda, and both girls got into the tonneau to ride to the Sherwood cottage. "Such richness!" Nan sighed.
The little cottage in amity looked just as cozy and homelike as ever. Nothing had been changed there save that the house had been newly painted. As the car came to a halt, the front door opened with a bang and a tiny figure shot out of it, down the walk, and through the gateway to meet Nan Sherwood as she stepped down from the automobile.
"My Nan! My Nan!" shrieked Inez, and the half wild little creature flung herself into the bigger girl's arms. "Come in and see how nice I've kept your mamma. I've learned to brush her hair just as you used to brush it. I'm going to be every bit like you when I get big. Come on in!"
With this sort of welcome Nan Sherwood could scarcely do less than enjoy herself during the week they remained in Tillbury. Inez, the waif, had become Inez, the home-body. She was the dearest little maid, so Momsey said, that ever was. And how happy she appeared to be!
Her old worry of mind about the possibility of "three square meals" a day and somebody who did not beat her too much, seemed to have been forgotten by little Inez. The kindly oversight of Mrs. Sherwood was making a loving, well-bred little girl of the odd creature whom Nan and Bess had first met selling flowers on the wintry streets of Chicago. Of course, during that week at home, the three girls from Lakeview Hall did not sit down and fold their hands. No, indeed! Bess Harley gave a big party at her house; and there were automobile rides, and boating parties, and a picnic. It was a very busy time.
"We scarcely know whether we have had you with us or not, Nan dear," said her mother. "But I suppose Rhoda wants to get home and see her folks, too; so we must not delay your journey. When you come back, however, mother wants her daughter to herself for a little while. We have been separated so much that I am not sure the fairies have not sent a changeling to me!" and she laughed.
At that, for it was not a hearty laugh and Momsey's eyes glistened, if Nan had not given her promise, "black and blue," to Rhoda, she would have excused herself and not gone to Rose Ranch at all. She knew that Momsey was lonely.
But Mrs. Sherwood did not mean to spoil her daughter's enjoyment. And the opportunity to see this distant part of the country was too good to be neglected. Nan might never again have such a chance to go West.