"What?"

"Billy is cleared, and I left the whole family munching humble pie."

"Archie!" And Theodora cast herself into his arms and wept hysterically.

The young man looked half abashed, half pleased, at his burden.

"Go easy, now, Ted," he remonstrated. "Don't take all the starch out of my collar, you know."

"Who did it?" she demanded.

"Phebe."

"Archie Holden! The little wretch! And she let Billy bear the blame!

I--"

"She's getting her come-uppance," Archie observed, with scant pity for Phebe. "She's no end ill with chicken pox. That's the reason your father couldn't come for you."

"I don't care; she deserves it," Theodora said vengefully. "How did it come out?"

"Providence seemed to take a hand in it, Ted. 'Twas the queerest thing.

The night after you left, when the family were all half wild about you, and no wonder, Babe took her hand in the game by coming down with hen pox. She caught cold somehow, the rash went in and struck on the brain, and she turned delirious. The first thing she did, she told the whole story. I suppose she had been harping on it so much that it came out, like murder."

"What did she do?"

"As nearly as we can piece it together, she and Isabel went into the barn, that morning, and started to feed Vigil. Then in fun they began firing things at each other, till at last Babe picked up a box of Paris green and shied it at Isabel. It struck the manger and broke all to pieces. They cleaned up what they could, and sneaked away. Whether Babe started to throw the blame on Billy at first, they don't know; but, after dinner, Babe hunted up the bottle and hid it in the manger. It isn't a pretty story, Ted; but it's true."

"Babe ought to be--"

"Abolished," Archie supplemented, with a jovial laugh. "No matter, your father will have something to say to her by and by. By Jove, Ted, I wish you'd seen him go down on his knees to Billy! There was something grand in it, to see him, with his gray hair and great brown eyes, apologizing to a boy like that. Of course, he owed him an apology and a big one; but not many men would have made it so generously before us all."

"There aren't many men like him," Theodora said proudly. "And Billy? How is he?"

"Jolly as a sandpiper. He vows that there's no one quite like you, though. You did stand by him like a good fellow, Ted, for a fact."

"You too, Archie. You helped me out, when you came. I wish you were my brother."

Archie laughed a little consciously.

"Maybe we can fix that up in time. Now go along and pack up your trumpery."

Theodora's face suddenly grew grave.

"Are they very angry at me at home, Archie?"

He laughed.

"Horribly. Still, I've an idea that, if you're meek enough, you'll be in a fair way to be forgiven."

And she was forgiven. Her welcome home was hearty and loving from them all, pathetically so from Billy, who tried in vain to cover his real emotion under a boyish indifference. The last words were still to be said, however; and it was not until Theodora sat alone in the office with her father, that night, that she felt the incident was ended and she stood among them on precisely the old ground.

"I can't blame you, my girl," he said at last, as he drew his arm yet more tightly about her waist. "You were rash and headstrong. You caused us two days of terrible anxiety, and you might have run into serious difficulties; but your purpose was a good one, even if it was too impetuous and daring for a child like you. We were all blind, Teddy, strangely blind; and I can never forgive myself for my unjust suspicions, nor be glad enough that you stood by your old friend in the face of all this evidence." There was a silence. Then he bent over and kissed her forehead. "Teddy dear, if you can only tame down this rashness of yours, and yet be the same loyal girl you are now, your womanhood will be very big and beautiful. But remember this, dear, in all this wilful, hasty end of the century, a true woman must be as gentle as she is brave, as thoughtful as she is loving."

"But I'm glad it's all over," Theodora said contentedly, the next day.

She and Billy sat on the piazza, in the golden noon of an early October day. Hope was in the hammock, with Allyn beside her and Archie on the floor at her feet, while Hubert sat on the rail facing them all.

Theodora had been entertaining them with an account of her journey, and she ended her story with these words.

"It has been a terrible month," Hope said thoughtfully. "After our years of placid existence, it seems as if a cyclone had struck us, all at once. I should think you'd wish you had never set eyes on us, Billy."

"I do," he replied tranquilly, as he stared at Theodora's bright face.

"Poor old William!" she said, laughing. "It was a sorry day for you when I descended on you from the apple-tree."

"Adam and Eve never knew how well off they were, till the serpent came,"

Archie suggested. "I have a notion we shall have a better time than ever, now it's all over."

"You can crow over it, if you like," Hubert said remorsefully. "You and Ted were on the winning side of things. Billy, my friendship isn't good for much; but I'll be hanged if I ever expected to go back on you and make such a jay of myself."

"Never mind, Hu; it's over now," Theodora said consolingly.

"Yes, thanks to you," Hubert returned. "My share in it isn't much."

Theodora laughed.

"Thanks to Babe, you'd better say. We should still have been a divided household, if Babe hadn't been benevolent enough to have chicken pox."

"She didn't," Allyn objected suddenly. "The chicken didn't come out any.

I watched to see it, and I couldn't, and papa said so, too, and that's what made her so wretchable."

"But it's over, as Teddy says," Hope observed, breaking in on the laugh that followed Allyn's contribution to medical science; "and I can't help feeling that we are going to have a lovely winter, with Archie here, and Billy to stay on till Thanksgiving. There's time to make up for all we've lost now."

"We'll make the most of it, then, for this will be my last winter here, for ever so long," Billy said, rising. "If I enter college, next fall, it will be a good while before I settle down at home again."

"And I too," Theodora added, as she rose and stood beside him.

He smiled down into her eyes for a moment, as they stood there. Then together they turned and walked away. The world about them lay golden in the sunlight and in the glow reflected back from the yellow leaves of the hickories; but not one whit less golden was the future, as it stretched away and away before their glad young eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It was commencement week at Smith College. To the alumna and the student, the picture called up by those words is sufficiently definite and demands no amplification. To them, is no prettier sight possible than the broad campus dotted with buildings, and the knots of daintily-dressed girls moving slowly to and fro along the winding paths.

The Meadow City always puts on her most festal array in honor of the occasion; the very heavens seem to watch for that week, and to provide for it the finest moon of the whole summer.

Baccalaureate was over, and, early Monday evening, groups were already gathering on the campus at the rear of College Hall, eager to secure comfortable places for the glee club concert. It was one of the charming pictures of the year, that concert, the cl.u.s.ter of girls on the steps facing the long rows of well-filled benches below. Beyond the benches, and extending far across the gra.s.s to the very steps of the old Dewey House, was a moving, shifting crowd, changing in form and color, as the brightly-dressed girls came and went, like the varying slides of a kaleidoscope. Back of the glee club, again, the open windows of the reading-room were filled with faces of old graduates who knew the place, and who chose this point of vantage either to protect their gowns and their elderly necks from the dampness outside, or to use their position facing the crowd to discover returning cla.s.smates whom they had missed in the throng.