"And it didn't turn out a stupid—half-way affair, after all," Hilary declared. "I've had a lovely time. Only, I simply had to come home, I felt somehow—that—that—"
"We were expecting company?" Pauline laughed. "And you wanted to be here?"
"I reckon that was it," Hilary agreed. As she sat there, resting a moment, before going up-stairs, she hardly seemed the same girl who had gone away so reluctantly only eight days before. The change of scene, the outdoor life, the new friendship, bringing with it new interests, had worked wonders,
"And now," Pauline suggested, taking up her sister's valise, "perhaps you would like to go up to your room—visitors generally do."
"To rest after your journey, you know," Patience prompted. Patience believed in playing one's part down to the minutest detail.
"Thank you," Hilary answered, with quite the proper note of formality in her voice, "if you don't mind; though I did not find the trip as fatiguing as I had expected."
But from the door, she turned back to give her mother a second and most uncompany-like hug. "It is good to be home, Mother Shaw! And please, you don't want to pack me off again anywhere right away—at least, all by myself?"
"Not right away," her mother answered, kissing her.
"I guess you will think it is good to be home, when you know—everything," Patience announced, accompanying her sisters up-stairs, but on the outside of the banisters.
"Patty!" Pauline protested laughingly—"Was there ever such a child for letting things out!"