Quit your whistlin' Jimmy, and hold your whist—all of you—don't you know your poor sister is dead for sleep. Hasn't she been up hill and down dale this last six weeks. I never saw the like of it, and it's a God's mercy she ever lived through it—and then last night when she drove over from her school nothing would do your pa but she must talk half the night, when she should have been in bed. So now clear out you lads, and let's keep the house quiet, for Pearl is a light sleeper and always was."

"And a light stepper too, ma, for here I am—up and dressed, and hungry as a bear." It was Pearl herself who opened the stairs' door.

A shout of joy arose from the assembly in the kitchen, dearer to Pearl than any burst of hand-clapping she had ever heard in a theatre, and there was a rush for the first kiss, which Danny landed neatly, though we must admit it was done by racing over his brother Patsey, who sat on the floor tying his boot, and Patsey's ruffled feelings did not subside until Pearl opened her valise, which stood inside the "room" door, and brought out jack-knives for the youngest four boys. Patsey declared, still smarting over the indignity of being run over, and stood upon, that Danny should not get a knife at all, but Mrs. Watson interposed for her latest born by saying:

"O Patsey, dear, don't be hard on him. He was just that overjoyed at seein' Pearl, he never noticed what he was standin' on; anything would ha' done him just as well as you."

"I'll overjoy him, you bet," grumbled Patsey—tenderly feeling the back of his neck, "when I get him outside. I'll show him what it feels like to have some one stand on your neck, with heavy boots."

Danny made no defence, but gazed rapturously on his sister, and expectantly at the valise, whose bulging sides gave forth promise of greater treasures yet to come.

"I have some things here for broken hearts and rainy days," said Pearl, "that Ma and Mary will be placed in charge of. I believe a skinned neck should qualify, so if Patsey Watson will dry his tears and iron out his face and step back against the wall, close his eyes—and smile—he will get a pleasant surprise."

Patsey complied with all the conditions. Indeed, he not only smiled, he grinned, showing a gaping expanse in the front of his mouth from which the middle tooth had gone, like a missing gate in a neat white fence.

When Pearl placed a box in his hands, which contained the makings and full directions for setting up a red and black box-kite, a picture of which in full flight adorned the cover, a war-whoop of joy rent the air.

"Ain't you the luckiest kid!" cried Tommy enviously, as he crowded to get another look. "If there's anything goin', you get it."

"Now clear out, all you boys, and let Pearl get her breakfast," said Mary. "I haven't had a chance to speak to her yet, and I want to know how the girls are wearing their hair and how long a girl of sixteen should wear her skirts, and lots of things."

The boys departed to make whistles with the new knives, Pearl offering a prize for the shrillest and fartherest reaching; to be tried at twelve o'clock noon, and silence settled once more on the kitchen.

"It's sort of too bad you came home on Saturday, Pearl," said her mother anxiously, as she toasted a slice of bread over the glowing wood coals. "The boys will pester you to death today and tomorrow—though of course I know you have no other time."

"I like to be pestered, ma," said Pearl, as she began on a generous helping of bacon and eggs. "Home is the best place, ma, and I never knew just how good it was to have home and folks of my own, as the day I went to school and found no children there. Isn't it queer, ma, how hard people can be on each other. It makes me afraid God must be disappointed lots of times, and feel like pulling down another flood and getting away to a fresh start again.

"But I am not going to talk about anything—until I get back to feeling the way I did when I went away. I want to see the hens and the cows and the new pigs. I want to get out in the honest, freckly sunshine. Do the potatoes need hoeing, ma? All right, pa and I will go at them. I like people, and all that, but I have to mix in lots of blue sky and plants, and a few good, honest horses, cows, dogs and cats—who have no underlying motives and are never suspicious or jealous, and have no regrets over anything they've done."

"But don't you like the city, Pearl?" Mary asked. "Don't you wish we all lived there? I do, you bet."

"I am glad my people live right here, Mary, out in the open, where there's room to breathe and time to think. O, I like the city, with its street cars weaving the streets together like shuttles; I love their flashing blue and red and green lights, as they slide past the streets, clanging their bells, and with faces looking out of the windows, and every one of the people knowing where they are going. I like the crowds that surge along the streets at night, and the good times they are having. I like it—for a visit. It's a great place to go to—if you have your own folks with you—I think I'd like it—on a wedding trip—or the like of that.

"But I want to see everything 'round home," said Pearl quickly. "Is the garden all up, and what did you sow, and where are the hens set, and did the cabbage plants catch?"

"You bet they did," said Mary proudly. "I transplanted them, and I put them in close. Pa said I would need to take out every second one, but I said we'd try them this way for once. You know the way cabbages sprawl and straggle all over the place—all gone to leaves. Well, mine won't, you bet, they'll heart up, because there's nothing else for them to do. Pa admits now its the best way. They've got no room to grow spraddly and they're just a fine sight already. Cabbages are just like any one else; it doesn't do to give them too much of their own way, and let them think they own the earth."

When breakfast was over, Pearl, Mary and Mrs. Watson went out into the hazy blue sunshine. The ravine below the house was musical with thrushes and meadow-larks. The blossoms had gone, and already the wild cherries and plums were forming their fruit. Cattle fed peacefully on the river banks, and some were cropping the volunteer growth of oats that had come on the summer fallow. The grain was just high enough to run ripples of light, as the gentlest of breezes lazily passed.

Pearl remembered the hopes and visions that had come to her the first day she and her father had come to the farm, and through all its dilapidation and neglect, she had seen that it could be made into a home of comfort and prosperity, and now the dream had come true. The Watson family were thriving; their farm had not failed them; comforts, and even a few luxuries were theirs, and Pearl's heart grew very soft and tender with a sense of gratitude.

It was not too good to be true, she thought, as she looked at the comfortable home, the new barn and the populous farmyard spread out under the quivering sunshine.

"It was not too good to be true," thought Pearl. "I can't complain, even if some of my dreams have failed me—and maybe—who knows?"

"It's got to come right," she thought it so hard, she looked up to see if Mary or her mother noticed. But they were busy with a hidden-away nest, just found in the willow windbreak.

The news of the neighborhood was given to her by Mary.

"The Paines are putting up a new house, Pearl, and Mrs. Paine has some real nice clothes, and they seem to be getting on far better."

"That's good," said Pearl, and then added, with such deep conviction, as if she were trying to convince some one, she said:

"There's nothing too good to be true."

At noon, when all the family had been fed, and the horses were resting in the well-bedded stalls—John Watson gave himself and his horses a two hours' rest in the heat of the day—when every one was present, Pearl told them something of her adventures on the six weeks of her absence. Especially did she tell the young brothers of the lonesome little boy who had no playmates, but who loved his mother so much he would not let her know that he was lonely.

Patsey had a solution of the difficulty:

"Take me back, when you go, Pearl, and I'll play with him, and let him fly my kite n' everything."

"O, he isn't lonely now," Pearl said, "thank you all the same—but I'm going to bring him over in the holidays, for he needs to play with boys of his own age."

"Danny better not run over him, and stand on his neck, though—he ain't used to it—the way we are," Patsy said, but was promptly advised to forget it, and let Pearl go on with the story, by Danny himself, to whom the subject was growing painful.

"His grandfather and grandmother came out when we did," Pearl said, "and they're staying at Purple Springs, and Jim and his grandfather are together all the time. Mrs. Gray—her real name is Mrs. Graham now—doesn't want her boy brought up in the city, and his grandfather is tired of the city too, so they're all living in the brown house, and every day's a picnic day."

"But oh! say we did have one of the grandest picnics a week after we got home from the city. On Mrs. Graham's farm there's a little stream which runs down to the river, and we got it cleaned out, and a big, long table made, and seats and all. Jim and his grandfather did the work—he was brought up on a farm, and can do anything. And the two women cooked for days, and I went round and asked every one to come to the picnic—and I told them who Mrs. Gray was, and all about it."

"Told each one in a secret, I suppose, and told them not to tell," said her father, smiling.

"I hope you rubbed it in, good and plenty," said Mary, "about them bein' so mean and full of bad thoughts."

"I did my best," said Pearl, "especially with some of them who had had so much to say, and they were keen to come, I tell you, to meet the Premier. That's what he'll always be called, too, and he sure looked that day when he sat at the head of the table, with the sunshine dappling the long table, with its salads and jellies and plates of sliced ham, and all the people sitting around kind of humble and sheepish. He wore his Prince Albert coat and his silk hat. He didn't want to—he thought it wasn't the thing for a picnic, but I held him up to it, for I didn't want the people to see him in his corduroy hunting suit. I know how impressed they would be with the fine clothes, and I was determined they should have every thrill.

"So he put on all his good clothes, even to his gray spats. I had to argue a long time to get them on him. He said they looked foppish, but I just got the button-hook and put them on him while he was arguing, and asked him who thought of this picnic anyway! and he just laughed and said he guessed he had to pass under the rod.

"And after all the people had been introduced, and the men were standing back, pretty hot and uncomfortable in their white shirts, he got up and asked every one to have a seat at the table, for he wanted to say a few words before we began to eat.

"You could have heard a leaf fall, it was so still, and then he told them all about his son, and how he didn't understand him, and never made a chum of him, and how he was so taken up with politics he forgot to be a father to his own boy. And he told about his son's marriage, and the whole story, right up to the time I went to see him in the city."

"'It's not easy telling this,' he said, 'but I put my daughter-in-law in wrong in this neighborhood, and I am going to make it right if I can. She is a noble, brave woman,' he said, 'and I am proud of her. I lost the election,' he continued, 'but I am glad of it, for in losing it, I found a daughter and a grandson,' and then he put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'and here's the deepest conspirator in the country, who managed the whole thing. This is the girl who made fun of me, and lambasted me, but who brought my daughter-in-law and me together, and when she runs for the Legislature, I promise I will get out and campaign for her.'

"Every one laughed then, and the people crowded up around him, and Annie, and you never saw so many people laughing and crying at the one time in your life.

"We had a big boiler of coffee on the little tin stove in the trees, and I grabbed off the white pitchers, and the biggest girls from the school helped serve, and we got the people all started in to eat, for it doesn't do to let people's feelings go too far.

"When they had quieted down a little, and were nearly through eating, the minister, who was at the other end of the table, got up and said he had an idea he wanted to pass on.

"'I'm ashamed,' he said—and I know he was—'of the way this community has treated Mrs. Gray and Jimmy,'—he didn't seem able to call her anything else either. 'On behalf of the district of Purple Springs, I apologize. We'll show our apology in something better than words, too, I hope,' he said, kind of swallowing his Adam's apple. 'We denied her child the right to play with our children, through our stupid and cruel thoughtlessness, now let us apologize by doing something for all the children of this neighborhood. This is a beautiful spot, a natural park; let us make it the Jim Gray Playgrounds, with swings, and sand-pile and acting bars and swimming pool, with a baseball ground up on the hill; where all our children, young people and old people too, can gather and be young and human and sociable together.'

"The people broke out into cheers and cries of 'We'll do it!' It seemed to relieve them.

"'And let us hold our church service here on Sundays, too, when the weather is fine. Our religion has been too stuffy, too mouldy, too damp, too narrow. It needs the sunshine and the clear air of heaven to sweeten it and revive it. I feel it today, that God is in the sunshine more than in the narrow limits we have tried to set upon Him.'

"'We sometimes deplore the tendency of our young people to go to the city,' he continued, 'but I don't know as I blame them. We've been living dull, drab lives for sure. Let us liven things up a bit, and give our people something to look forward to during the week, and something pleasant to remember. It's the utter dreariness of life that kills people—not hard work.'

"And then," said Pearl, "I could see the people wanted to sing or cry, or dance, or something, to work off their emotions; so I signalled to Bessie Cowan, who is one of our best singers, to start a hymn that the children sing every morning. They knew it well, and the people had learned it from them. I never heard anything like it. It flashed up through the highest branches of the trees, into the blue air. I am sure God heard it, and was pleased:

"God is in His temple
Let the earth keep silent."

"Little Jim knew it too, and his voice was sweeter than all the rest. It seemed easy for every one to talk or sing or laugh—or do whatever they wanted to do. It was wonderful to see people come out of their hard brown husks and be natural and neighborly."

"Sure, and it was more like a revival meetin' than a picnic, Pearlie," said her father, laughing.

"It was that, pa," she answered, "and like a term in a reform school for some of them. There had been a big quarrel among them about a road-scraper, and the next day every one was offering to wait, instead of grabbing at it the way they had been; and the women who had fallen out over a sleeve pattern and fought rings round, and called each other everything they could name, made it up right there.

"Before they parted, they agreed to have the services there on Sunday—that's tomorrow, and the ex-Premier is going to speak after the service on 'How to Build a Community.' All the women are baking, and everybody will bring their visitors, instead of staying home from church the way they've been doing, and the children can play in the sand-pile, and sail their boats on the little creek, and it looks as if Purple Springs has experienced a change of heart."

"Don't you think there's a danger of leadin' them to thinkin' too light of the Lord's day, Pearlie, picknicking that way," asked her mother anxiously, "and maybe makin' them lose their religion?"

"O, I'm not worried about that neighborhood losing its religion, ma," said Pearl. "Any neighborhood that could treat a stranger the way they did! But I do believe the sunshine and blue sky, the flowers and birds, and the getting together, along with the words of the sermon and the hymns they'll sing, will make them a lot more human. I never can think it would hurt God's feelings a bit to see children playing, and neighbors happy together on His day.

"They want us all to come; if you don't think it's too far to drive with the whole family, and I've been training the children all week to sing—it looks like a good time."

"We'll go!" cried Danny and Patsey, with one voice, and with brotherly unity prevailing—for once.