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 pooled their savings, sneaked into the train, and gone to Bridgetown to see a thrilling matinée performance of Hazel Kirke. During the return journey they had stood on the platform and each smoked half a Sweet Caporal. Gritty had even suggested that they should run away and go on the stage.

As the winter progressed and the long thaw set in, Aunt Verona's time was almost wholly devoted to her manuscripts. Becky was in control, and her unearthly growls and rich baritone bursts of song brought an unaccountable note of cheer into the depression of the house. "Sometimes I feel like a motherless chile," Becky would drone as she scrubbed, and once Aunt Verona looked up to exclaim, with an old-time gleam of humour, "Mercy, Becky, what a gloomy tune!"

But Becky, who was a law unto herself, went on, de plus belle, "a long ways from ho-o-ome, a long wa-ays from home." It was plain to her, as it was to Paul, that Aunt Verona liked the song. Besides, Becky's lugubriousness was one of Hale's Turning's stock diversions. Its comic value was enhanced by the long glass prisms hanging from her ears and resting on her calico shoulders.

One morning in April, after weeks of wind and rain, a flicker of sunlight broke through the clouds and a breeze stole into the village with the news that Spring was coming. The trees whispered the message; the sparrows, eavesdropping in their branches, overheard it and flew up and down and around in excitement. Paul guessed it and ran out of the house, brandishing his book-bag and leaping high over the mud-puddles. Aunt Verona must have known it too, with the experience of many a barren change of season. She had spent a sleepless night and was suffering with neuralgia, an ailment of long-standing. When Becky had cleared the breakfast table, Aunt Verona went into the playroom and stood at the window to wave Paul the usual good-bye. The trees in the neg-