"She says she's going to put all her pretty things in a box and mark it for me when I'm twelve, going on thirteen," said Polly answering for her. "She says she's sure she'll never live to use 'em. Now, isn't that silly? Because farms are healthy, I thought!"
Happie laughed. "Oh, Laura," she cried, "how can you be such a goose? I wouldn't count on getting those treasures if I were you, Polly. I think Laura may live to use them."
Laura regarded Happie with serene superiority. "Grief often kills," she said with the brevity of a tragic poet. "I'm sure I shall pine away. Do you know what nostalgia means?"
Again Happie laughed out merrily. "No; do you?" she said.
"It means homesickness," replied Laura with crushing dignity. "I found the word in a book of poetry and I looked it up, because I knew it must mean something lovely and sad. I made a song without words about it; it goes this way." And Laura hummed a line of music that was more minor than any known key seemed able to represent.
"Isn't that perfectly be-au-ti-ful?" she demanded. "Doesn't that sound just like nostalgia? That may be my last composition; it will be if this move kills me, as I 'most know it will. Wouldn't you feel sure that meant some one dying of homesickness if you heard it, and no one told you?"
"What a queer thing you are, Laura!" exclaimed Happie, half impressed, though she could never keep a respectfully straight face over Laura's performances. "I can't tell whether it sounds like nos—what-you-call-it or not, because I never heard the word before, so I haven't had time to know it set to music, but I don't think I should know that tune meant homesickness. It sounds to me like the wail of the washerwoman who got too much blueing in the clothes—it's the bluest thing I ever heard."
"You haven't one bit of—of anything in you, Happie," said Laura turning away pettishly.
Bob came in, his arms full of half-discarded boyish treasures. "Say, what do you think, Hap; will there be room for this stuff?" he demanded. "I could give it up, but I'd just as lief keep it. You see it won't be our house."
"Still there must be room for everything, since it's a farm, and we have a freight car to ourselves. I'd keep it," said Happie with the understanding she could not give Laura.