"You must come out and see us, Tom," she said earnestly. "I want to show you everything, and make you like our part of the country as well as--as well as I like this. Your ways are different from ours, of course; but I've got a lot of new ideas, and I've had an awfully good time with you, Tom. I didn't know I _could_ feel so bad to go away."
"I guess I should like it out your way too," said Tom, turning his head as if it were not quite safe to look into her eyes at that moment, "and perhaps sometime I can come. I guess it's good for folks to see something besides their own things, and--I _know_ I should like it out West if _you_ were there."
And then they parted, each of them having apparently some trouble with the throat just then, and Tom drawing his sleeve across his eyes in a suspicious manner as he walked down the lane.
"The Lord bless and keep you and cause His face to shine upon you," Ruel Saxon said solemnly as he bade the girl good-by at the depot.
It was the last word before the train pulled out, for Esther's heart was full, and she could say no more after sending her love for the thousandth time to them all at home. And then the beautiful New England village, with its lovely homes and shaded streets, faded from Kate's sight; the hills and the little fields, crossed by the old stone walls, rushed past her, and it was the wide green stretches of the home country for which the eyes of her heart were straining as she flew on into the West.
It was a great day for the family when she reached home. The doctor was at the depot, impatient as a boy over the three minutes' delay in the train that brought her in, and he almost forgot to secure her trunk, or set her bag into the carriage, in his delight at seeing her.
"Well, I believe they must have treated you pretty well back there," he said, pinching her cheek. And he would have had her on the scales before she left the depot if she had not protested that she could not spare a second getting weighed.
"I shall lose a pound for every minute we waste getting home," she cried, jumping into the carriage; and at this he laughed, and putting the reins into her hands, told her to get the gray filly over the ground as fast as she pleased. How they did go dashing down the road, and what wonder that excitement was rife in the town that afternoon as to what member of the community was lying at the point of death that the doctor was going at such a rate to see him!