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264 and I can’t help being glad not to have even heaven without my chumsters,” she said.

Florimel choked. When she was quite small, Mary had contracted the two words, “chums” and “sisters” into “chumsters,” to express the peculiar closeness of the tie between the Garden girls. Florimel had always loved it. It was so sweet to hear it now, and to know that their intimate love was not to be cruelly sundered, that she ran out of the room to be tearfully glad, alone, on the stairs. Jane jumped up, and ran over to Mary.

“I couldn’t have heaven without you, Molly darling,” she said, putting her glowing head down beside Mary’s brown one on the pillow. “It wouldn’t be that, you know, if I saw you poking about the old garden beds down here without me. When are you coming out into the garden again, old Niceness?”

“Soon, I think,” said Mary. “I don’t intend to be long getting back my strength.”

Mary was as good as her word. Now that her painful wounds had begun to heal, her sound young flesh went on rapidly with its task of restoration. In two days less than two weeks Mary was dressed in a beautiful new gown, all white and blue and soft-falling drapery, which