"Good land—it must be four o'clock, for here come the children! My—Nanny, but it's good to have you home again!"
"Well," smiled Grandma, as she watched the spring twilight sift down over Green Valley that evening, "I've always said that this town was full of folks who make you cry one minute and laugh the next."
CHAPTER XXIV
HOME AGAIN
It had pleaded for forgiveness and an early homecoming, that little yellow slip that Nanny Ainslee treasured so. But the bluebirds were darting through leafy bowers and the ploughed, furrowed fields lay smoking in the spring sunshine before Nan came back.
A week after her arrival in Scranton the old aunt had been taken sick, and it was months before the old soul was herself again. Nan stayed through it all. But the day came when she was free to go back to the little home town where the cloud shadows were rippling over low, dimpling hills, already gay with the gold of wild mustard and the tender blues and greens of a new glad spring.
She came home one evening when Green Valley lay wrapped in a warm, thick, fragrant mist. So no one saw her step off the train straight into the arms of Cynthia's son. And nobody heard the quivering joy of his one cry at the sight of her.
"Nan!"
Slowly, as in a dream, they walked through their fragrant, misty world to where, in a deep, old hearth, a fire sang of love and home, dreams and eternal happiness; where an armchair waited with its mate and an old clock ticked on the stairs.