`I don't mind,' responded Clover cheerfully. `I rather like to change about and try a new room once in a while. It's as good as going on a journey - almost.'

She pushed aside the half-finished dress as she spoke, opened a drawer, took out its contents, and began to carry them across the entrance to Dorry's room, doing everything with the orderly deliberation that was characteristic of whatever Clover did. Her preparations were almost complete before Katy returned, bringing with her little Amy Ashe.

Amy was a tall child of eight, with a frank, happy face, and long light hair hanging down her back. She looked like the pictures of Alice in Wonderland, but just at that moment it was a very woeful little Alice indeed that she resembled, for her cheeks were stained with tears and her eyes swollen with recent crying.

`Why, what is the matter?' cried kind little Clover, taking Amy in her arms, and giving her a great hug. `Aren't you glad that you are coming to make us a visit? We are.'

`Mamma didn't kiss me for goodbye,' sobbed the little girl. `She didn't come downstairs at all. She just put her head out of the window and said, "Goodbye, Amy! be very good, and don't make Miss Carr any trouble," and then she went away. I never went anywhere before without kissing mamma goodbye.'

`Mamma was afraid to kiss you for fear she might give you the fever,' explained Katy, taking her turn as a comforter. `It wasn't because she forgot. She felt worse about it than you did, I imagine. You know the thing she cares most for is that you shall not be ill as your cousin Walter is. She would rather do anything than have that happen. As soon as he gets well she will kiss you dozens of times, see if she doesn't. Meanwhile, she says in this note that you must write her a little letter every day, and she will hang a basket by a string out of the window, and you and I will go and drop the letters into the basket, and stand by the gate and see her pull it up. That will be funny, won't it? We will play that you are my little girl, and that you have a real mamma and a make-believe mamma.'

`Shall I sleep with you?' demanded Amy.

`Yes, in that bed over there.'

`It's a pretty bed,' pronounced Amy after examining it gravely for a moment. `Will you tell me a story every morning?'

`If you don't wake me up too early. My stories are always sleepy till seven o'clock. Let us see what Ellen has packed in that bag, and then I'll give you some drawers of your own, and we will put the things away.'

The bag was full of neat little frocks and underclothes stuffed hastily in together. Katy took them out, smoothing the folds, and crimping the tumbled ruffles with her fingers. As she lifted the last skirt, Amy, with a cry of joy, pounced on something that lay beneath it.

`It is Maria Matilda,' she said; `I'm glad of that. I thought Ellen would forget her, and the poor child wouldn't know what to do, with me and her little sister not coming to see her for so long. She was having the measles on the back shelf of the closet, you know, and nobody would have heard her if she had cried ever so loud.'

`What a pretty face she has!' said Katy, taking the doll out of Amy's hands.

`Yes, but not so pretty as Mabel. Miss Upham says that Mabel is the prettiest child she ever saw. Look, Miss Clover,' lifting the other doll from the table where she had laid it, `hasn't she got sweet eyes? She's older than Maria Matilda, and she knows a great deal more. She's begun on French verbs!'

`Not really! Which ones?'