"My darling! You have come at last!" was what she said.
And, as on that night when she had come to plead for freedom, Joan did not, now, rush into human touch. She nodded and whispered:
"I've come as I promised to, Aunt Dorrie. It—it wasn't my chance! Not my big chance, anyhow, but I had to find out, dearie."
"My little girl!"
Joan went nearer; she bent and kissed again and again that radiant face; then, sitting on the floor by the couch, with Cuff huddled close, she touched lightly the high peaks that lay between the parting and this home-coming, but Doris, with that deep understanding, followed laboriously, silently, through the dark valleys.
"I'm rather battered and cropped, Aunt Dorrie—but here I am!"
With this Joan tossed off her hat and voluminous coat.
"Your—hair, Joan? Your beautiful hair!"
"I have been very sick, Aunt Dorrie, my hair and my fat had to go—just enough bones left to hold my soul. But I'm all right now."
"Don't be sorry for me," Joan was pleading, "I'm the gladdest thing alive to-day. I've dropped all the old husks; I've found out just what they are worth, but some of them that seem like husks, dear, are not—I've learned that, too."