And soon they were on the sandy road the buggy had travelled an hour before. Their horses, with heads close together, nodded sleepily as they walked in the starlight; you might have counted the rise and fall of their feet in the sand; and Waldo in his saddle nodded drowsily also. Only Em was awake, and watched the starlit road with wide-open eyes. At last she spoke.

“I wonder if all people feel so old, so very old, when they get to be seventeen?”

“Not older than before,” said Waldo, sleepily, pulling at his bridle.

Presently she said again,

“I wish I could have been a child always. You are good then. You are never selfish; you like every one to have everything; but when you are grown up there are some things you like to have all to yourself, you don’t like any one else to have any of them.”

“Yes,” said Waldo sleepily, and she did not speak again.

When they reached the farm-house all was dark, for Lyndall retired as soon as they got home.

Waldo lifted Em from her saddle, and for a moment she leaned her head on his shoulder and clung to him.

“You are very tired,” he said, as he walked with her to the door; “let me go in and light a candle for you.”

“No, thank you; it is all right,” she said. “Good night, Waldo dear.”

But when she went in she sat long alone in the dark.

CHAPTER VII

WALDO GOES OUT TO TASTE LIFE, AND EM STAYS AT HOME AND TASTES IT

AT nine o’clock in the evening, packing his bundles for the next morning’s start, Waldo looked up, and was surprised to see Em’s yellow head peeping in at his door. It was many a month since she had been there. She said she had made him sandwiches for his journey, and she stayed awhile to help him put his goods into the saddlebags.”

“You can leave the old things lying about,” she said; “I will lock the room, and keep it waiting for you to come back some day.”