"Oh, how deadly I felt when I came here!" said Jean. "Knowing no one, and thinking that if I died in the cab no one near me would care!"
They reached Ridgetown in the afternoon. A carriage was drawn up at the station gates. In it were Mrs. Leighton, Miss Grace and Elma.
Mabel stood transfixed.
"Oh, Elma," she said, "Elma!"
Elma knew it. She wasn't as fat as a pumpkin after all. And every one had kept on saying that she was fatter than any pumpkin. Mabel was the only one who had told the truth. She leaned over the folded hood of the carriage and hugged her gently.
"I should like to inform you Mabs, I'm as fat as a pumpkin."
But Mabel hung on to the carriage with her head down. No one had told her that Elma had been so ill as this.
Elma had the look of having been in a far country--why hadn't some one told her? Miss Grace, who had been away for some weeks with Adelaide Maud and had just got back in fairly good spirits, did some of the conversing which helped Mabel to recover herself.
Cuthbert and Betty came hurrying up from the wrong end of the train.
"Oh, and we missed you," wailed Betty, "and I wanted to be the first."