Grace Harlowes Golden Summer | Page 7

that anything so glorious has
happened to ordinary me. It's more than a surprise. It's a positive
miracle. My own beautiful House Behind the World! But I know an
even better name for it. It's not one I thought of myself. That glory
belongs to Kathleen West. You know, Tom, she once wrote an
allegorical play. We produced it when I was in my senior year at

Overton. I played the part of Loyalheart who leaves Haven Home to go
into the Land of College. When first it began to dawn upon me that you
meant this wonder to be my very own, it came to me like a flash that it
was more than the House Behind the World. Don't you see, Tom? It's
really and truly, Haven Home!"
CHAPTER III
FOR AULD LANG SYNE
"And so, having ended her pilgrimage through the Land of College,
Loyalheart is going back to Haven Home," said Kathleen West softly.
"You're a very lucky Loyalheart," was J. Elfreda Briggs' brisk comment.
"Not every one who goes adventuring into strange lands finds the home
of her chee-ildhood an interesting place to settle down in. Now take
Fairview, for instance. I wouldn't go trotting back there on a cut-rate
excursion, let alone making a pilgrimage to the sacred, I mean scared,
spot. That's the way it looks, you know; as though it had once tried to
grow and then been frightened out of it. I never was so glad in all my
life as when Pa said we'd kiss that town good-bye. I could see that I'd
never make my everlasting fortune there as a lawyer."
"You mean lawyeress, according to the Dean vocabulary," reminded
Arline Thayer with a giggle.
"What is life without Emma Dean?" smiled Anne Nesbit. "I wish she
were here to-night."
"I wrote her, asking her to pay me a visit while you girls were here,"
stated Arline, "but she wrote back voluminous and ridiculous thanks
and said the reunion was about as much as she could manage."
"That reminds me," broke in Elfreda, in business-like tones, "where are
we going to hold the reunion this year and at what time? Not much of
July is left us. August will scud by like a flash and then--Well, Grace
can tell you why September won't be a strictly popular time for a
reunion. Sara and Julia Emerson want us to have it at their camp in the

Adirondacks. That's rather a long distance for Emma to come. You
know she lives farther away than the rest of us. Why can't you come
down to Wildwood again? I am nothing if not hospitable."
"But it's my turn, now, J. Elfreda," protested Arline. "Why can't you
come here?"
"What's the use in taking turns?" propounded Elfreda sturdily. "I am an
extremely selfish person who never bothers about such little things as
mere 'taking turns.' Now that four of you girls have your faces set
toward wedding rings, it's high time something was done to console me.
There! Resist that argument if you can. Am I a credit to my profession,
or am I not?"
"You are," chorused five laughing voices.
Several days had elapsed since Grace Harlowe had accompanied Tom
Gray and his aunt on the mysterious mission that had brought her
Haven Home. Following that memorable morning, the delightful events
of which had offered such signal proof of the adoration of her dear ones,
Grace had moved about as one lost in a maze of quiet happiness. Every
now and then her mind would halt suddenly in the perusal of the
blessings that were hers to wonder almost wistfully if it were not all too
beautiful, too dear, to last.
Sometimes she marveled that, after so long and persistently keeping
love out of her busy life, she should have at length come into its purest
realization. Once the very thought of it had irked and distressed her.
Now she experienced a sense of deep surprise that she had been so
blind. Her Golden Summer had indeed descended upon her in all its
radiant glory. She rejoiced in the long peaceful mornings spent with her
mother on the vine-clad veranda, or in the clematis-wreathed summer
house at the end of the garden. They were busy mornings, too, filled
with the joy of preparing the countless dainty odds and ends, so
necessary to her trousseau. Their hands never idle, they talked long and
earnestly of the things which lay nearest their hearts, and a strange
peace, which Grace's naturally restless temperament had never before
known, enveloped her like a mantle.

Though anxious to meet her friends again in New York City, Grace had
sighed with genuine regret at leaving this new-found peace and
departing from Oakdale on the most momentous shopping tour she had
ever before set