"Will you go for her to-day?" Aunt Hetty asked. "It's dreadful lonesome without her."
"Not to-day. Next week will do. She'll forget him faster there than here, Hetty."
It wanted but three days of Christmas when Uncle Reuben went for his niece, and it was late on Christmas eve when they returned. The snow was piled high and white everywhere. The trees stood up, black, rattling skeletons around the old house. All things seemed to have changed in the weeks of her absence, and nothing more than Norine Bourdon.
She sank down in a chair, in a tired, spiritless sort of way, and let Aunt Hetty remove her wraps. She had grown thin, in the past fortnight, and pale and worn-looking.
"You precious little Norry," aunt Hetty said, giving her a welcoming hug. "You can't tell how glad we are to have you back again; how dreadfully we missed you. I expect you enjoyed your visit awfully now?"
"No," the young girl answered, with an impatient sigh; "it was dull."
"Dull, Norry! with four girls and three young men in the house?"
"Well, it was dull to me. I didn't care for their frolics and sleighing parties and quilting bees. It was horridly stupid, the whole of it."
"Then you are glad to be home again?"
"Yes."